If you are using
Internet Explorer 10 (or later), you might find some of the links I have used won't
work properly unless you switch to 'Compatibility View' (in the Tools Menu); for
IE11 select 'Compatibility View Settings' and then add this site. Also, if you
are using Mozilla Firefox, you might find several of the words and links
on this page have been hijacked by advertisers. I have no control over this so I
recommend you stop using Mozilla.

However, several of the
links I have posted to Richard Seymour's blog -- Lenin's Tomb -- no
longer seem to work. It now appears there has been a slight change to Lenin
Tomb's URL. It will take me some time to correct all the relevant links!

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

For those who might find the length of this Essay somewhat daunting (it is after all the same length
as a 300 page book!), I have summarised some of its main points
here.

Others who might be
puzzled by the length of this Essay should reflect on the fact that anything
shorter would hardly do justice to the subject.

The material published below should be read in
conjunction with Essay Nine
Part One
-- where many of the things I appear to take for granted below are discussed in
more detail, and substantiated --, as well as Essay Ten Part One,
where this part of the story is
concluded.

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

As is the case with all my Essays, nothing said here
is aimed at undermining Historical Materialism
[HM] -- a theory I fully accept -- or, for that matter, revolutionary socialism. My aim is
simply to assist in the scientific development of Marxism by (1) Demolishing a
dogma that has in
my opinion seriously
damaged our movement from its inception:
Dialectical Materialism [DM] -- or, in its more political form, 'Materialist
Dialectics' [MD] --, and by (2) Exposing the class origin of comrades who
accept/defend this theory, and hence by (3) Exposing one source of the
many debacles we have witnessed on the far-left over the last hundred or
so years.

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

Readers new to my ideas would be wrong
conclude from the title of this Essay that it is all about DM and its effect on Marxism. It is just as much about the class origin of
the founders of our movement (and those who control its ideas today) as it is about that
particular theory.

As such it breaks entirely new ground -- as anyone who reads on will soon
discover --, providing for the first time [**] an historical materialist explanation why
our movement so often fails and why much that we on the Revolutionary Left touch
sooner-or-later becomes corrupted, and then turns to dust.

**This comment is no longer strictly true; a partial
explanation for this malaise has now been posted
here. I have reproduced the core of its argument
below. While this 'new' explanation echoes Trotsky's analysis of substitutionism (covered
more fully in
Part One of this
Essay), it omits (1) Any mention of the wider class-based and structural problems our
movement has faced, and still faces, and it completely ignores (2) Its historical and ideological
roots. Nor does it consider (3) Why this keeps happening, and will keep
happening. I
have addressed these issues in the Essays published at this site (and
more specifically in the material presented below).

Another analysis, which, I think also
beaks new ground, has just been posted
here, up-dated
here. While it is encouraging to see comrades attempting to account (on a
sociological basis) for
the serial disasters that regularly engulf the far-left, the analyses that have appeared so
far, including the above two, still refuseeven to consider the issues
raised in the previous paragraph. Indeed, the author of this above article,
who is the also owner
of the blog in question, refused to post my contribution to the debate! (Below, I also endeavour to explain why that is
so -- i.e., why debate on this issue is still very heavily constrained --, for example,
here.)

Update 01/01/2014: I ought to add
that my latest contribution, brief though it was, has been published at the
above site!

These untoward events are/were predictable given
the things you will read below, as are the many more we will witness on the
far-left in the future.

Unfortunately, fragmentation,
expulsion and bureaucratic cover-up seem to be the
only things we Marxists are really good at!

Update 09/06/2014: We now learn of
new accusations of rape, this time in the Swedish Trotskyist, Socialist
Justice Party (affiliated with the CWI). More details
here (trigger warning: descriptions of sexual violence).

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

A section devoted to the on-going crisis
in the UK-SWP that used to form part of this preamble
has now been moved here since
these opening comments were becoming a little too long.

A new section: 'The
Last Death Throes Of The UK-SWP?' has just been added to the Appendices as a result of the
latest wave of resignations following on the December 2013 Conference. One
crisis in the UK-SWP, see also
here and
here in the same Appendix.

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

It is important to
underline what I am not doing in this Essay: I am not arguing that
DM/MD have helped ruin Marxism
and therefore they are false. My argument is in fact the reverse: as the
Essays published at this site
show, because DM/MD make not one ounce of sense -- to such an extent that it is impossible
for anyone to
decide whether or not they are true --, it is no big surprise that they
have not only
helped cripple our movement, they have assisted in no small way to its corruption.

Nor am I blaming all our woes on DM/MD
(note the italicised word "helped" the second paragraph above!);
however, that is
one of the main themes of Essay Ten
Part One.
Our "woes" in fact have many
causes, but in this Essay I trace two of the
main reasons why Dialectical Marxism -- note also the use of the word
"dialectical" here; the non-dialectical version hasn't been
road-tested yet! --
has
now become almost synonymous with failure, corruption and sectarian in-fighting.
Namely:
(a) The class origin, socialisation and class position of the founders of our movement,
and of those who now lead it, and (b)
The philosophical theory with which they have saddled Marxism.

Of course, there are
other reasons why our movement has been such a long-term failure, but most
comrades (that is, those who are even prepared to acknowledge this appalling record) are well aware
of what these are. Hence, I have largely ignored these "other reasons" in what follows. That
doesn't mean they aren't important; it is just that I'd only be raking over
familiar territory if I included them here.

I am only publishing this on the Internet because several comrades whose
opinions I respect urged me to do so, even though the work you see before you is less
than half complete. Many of my ideas are still in the developmental stage, as it
were, and need much work and time devoted to them before they mature.

In addition, this Essay has
been written
from within the Trotskyist tradition, but because I have found that my work is
being read by other Marxists, I have had to incorporate an analysis of the
negative influence that items (a) and (b)
above have had on Communism and Maoism, too. Since I am far less
familiar with these two political currents, many of my comments in this area
are even more tentative than they are elsewhere. I will add more material as my researches
continue.

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

Independently of this, it is worth adding
that phrases like "ruling-class theory", "ruling-class view of reality",
and "ruling-class ideology" (etc.) -- used at this site in connection with
Traditional Philosophy and the concepts that underpin DM/MD (upside down
or 'the right way up') -- aren't meant to imply that all or even
most members of various ruling-classes actually invented this way of thinking or of
seeing the world (although some of them did -- for example,
Heraclitus,
Plato,
Cicero and
Marcus Aurelius).
They are intended to
highlight theories (or "ruling ideas") that are conducive to, or which rationalise the
interests of the various ruling-classes history has inflicted on humanity, whoever invents them. Up until recently this
dogmatic approach to knowledge had almost invariably been promoted by thinkers who relied on
ruling-class patronage, or who, in one capacity or another, helped run the
system
for the elite.

However, that will become the
central topic of Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve (when they are published; until then, the reader is
directed here,
here, and
here, for further
details.)

It is worth pointing out, too, that a good 50% of my case
against DM/MD (along with much that I have to say about the class origin and
class position of leading Marxists) has been relegated to the End Notes.
Indeed, in this particular Essay, most of the supporting evidence is to
be found there! This has been done to allow the main body of the Essay to flow a little more
smoothly. If readers want to appreciate fully my case against DM/MD, they will
need to read this material, too. In many respects, I have greatly qualified and
amplified what I have to say in main body of this Essay. I have also raised objections to my own arguments (some obvious, many not -- and some that will
no doubt have occurred to
the reader), which I have then proceeded to answer.
[I explain why I have done this in
Essay One.]

If readers skip this material, then my answers to any
qualms or objections they might have will be missed, as will my expanded comments,
supporting evidence
and clarifications.

[Since I have been
debating this theory with comrades for over 25 years, I have heard all the
objections there are! (Links to many of the more recent 'debates' can be found
here.)]

Anyone who can't be bothered to plough
through all the material I have presented here can use the
Quick Links below, or consult the summaries of key points I have posted here,
here and
here.

A very basic outline of my overall objections
to DM/MD can be accessed here; the
reason why I embarked on this project (back in 1998) is explained
here.

Anyone puzzled by the unremittingly
hostile tone I have adopted toward DM/MD (and toward anyone who
propagates these
theories) should read
this first
should they want to know why.

Parts of this Essay are, unfortunately, a little
repetitious. I am in fact trying to make the same point from several different
angles. [An "all-round" perspective, as Lenin might have said.]

Incidentally, I have no
illusions that this Essay (or any of the other Essays published at this site)
will make a blind bit of difference, or even that it will get a fair hearing
from the DM-faithful. Dialectically-distracted comrades cling to
DM/MD for non-rational reasons (explored
fully in what follows). It will take revolutionary workers themselves
to rejuvenate our movement and rescue dialecticians from themselves. This will
only happen if and when the proletariat rid the world of the alienating forces that make it
attractive for the faithful to look to mystical concepts ('contradictions', 'the
negation of the negation', 'unities of opposites', 'determinations',
'mediations', 'moments' -- upside
down or 'the right way up') to help explain, and thus influence, social development.

What I hope to achieve
is prevent younger comrades from catching this
Hermetic Virus.

Finally, in what follows I am dealing with
all forms of Dialectical Marxism [DIM], not just with Dialectical
Trotskyism (or even with the structure and ideology of the UK-SWP!). Some of the things
I have to say therefore apply to all forms of DIM, while all of
them apply to some.

[On the almost identical use of DM/MD across
all forms of DIM, see here and here.
On the difference between HM and DM/MD, see
here.]

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

As of January 2015, this
Essay is just under 157,500 words long. As noted above, a much shorter summary of some of its main
points can be accessed here,
and an even shorter one,
here.

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

This page was becoming
rather unwieldy so I have moved the Appendices to a
separate area.

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

The
material below does not represent my final view of any of the issues raised; it is
merely 'work in progress'.

Anyone using these links must remember that
they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier
sections.

If you are viewing this
with
Mozilla Firefox, you might not be able to read all the symbols I have used. I do
not know if other browsers are similarly affected.

Also, if your Firewall/Browser has a 'pop-up' blocker, you
might need to press the "Ctrl" key at the same time or the links above and below
won't work!

I have adjusted the
font size used at this site to ensure that even those with impaired
vision can read what I have to say. However, if the text is still either too
big or too small for you, please adjust your browser settings!

This Part of Essay Nine deals with some
of the background reasons for the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism [DIM],
linking it with the class origin and class position of those who control both
its ideas and its structures. It also
exposes the reasons why dialecticians cling to
DM/MD like
terminally insecure limpets, despite (a) The damage it has done to Marxism, and (b) The fact that it has presided over 150 years
of almost total failure.

In these respects this Essay is a continuation of the argument developed in Essay NinePart One, which is further elaborated
upon in Essay Ten Part One --
where the usual
replies advanced by dialecticians to allegations like these will be outlined
and then neutralised, and more
general theoretical
issues (concerning the relation between theory and practice) will be analysed.

Spoiler alert: In the aforementioned
Essay it will be shown
that truth can't be tested in practice, and that even if it could,
practice has returned a very clear message: Dialectical Marxism has been refuted
by history.

[Notice the use of the phrase "Dialectical
Marxism", here -- and not "Marxism" --, the non-dialectical form of the
latter hasn't been tried yet.]

In which case,
dialecticians would be well advised to avoid using practice as a test
of the correctness of their theory.

In Essay Ten Part One, I
will also reveal
why the claim that Dialectical Marxism has been
a long-term and
abject failure is no exaggeration.

[To save on needless repetition, from now on,
when readers encounter the abbreviation "DM" ("Dialectical Materialism") on its own, they should
in general view
this as incorporating a reference to MD (Materialist Dialectics), as well -- and/or
vice versa.]

"The 'strategic perplexity' of the left
confronted with the gravest crisis of capitalism in generations has been hard to
miss. Social democracy continues down the road of social liberalism. The
far-left has struggled to take advantage of ruling class disarray. Radical left
formations have tended to stagnate at best." [Seymour
(2012), p.191. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted
at this site.]

Of course, as Richard goes on to point out, there are two notable exceptions to
this generalisation -- the gains made by the electoral left in Greece and
France --, but it is far from clear that the 'Dialectical Left' have benefitted
(or will benefit) from this in any way.

Indeed, a movement that is constantly
fragmenting, and which maintains an incessant war between its member parties,
isn't likely to grow to a size that will threaten even a handful of bosses or
local police chiefs, let alone the entire capitalist class.

"There is no question
that the global recession on the back of the constant 'war on terror'
has produced a radicalisation. Anti-capitalism is widespread. Evidence
comes from the sheer scale of popular mobilisations over the last
decade. Once, achieving a demonstration of 100,000 in Britain was
regarded as an immense achievement. When grizzled lefties looked back on
the demo of that size against the Vietnam War in October 1968, tears
welled in their eyes. Now a London demo has to be counted in hundreds of
thousands, to be a success.

"Yet this
radicalisation, in Britain at least, has not been accompanied by the
growth of any of the political currents which you would expect to
benefit from this anti-capitalism. And I mean any, even those who reject
the label 'Party'.

"The situation the
left finds itself in is worse than when it entered the new century....

"No other period of
radicalisation in British history has experienced this lack of any
formal political expression. It's not that people opposing austerity,
war and much else are without politics. They are busy devouring
articles, books, online videos and much else." [Quoted from
here. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted
at this site.]

"Let's start with a simple observation: the
revolutionary left is not growing. Indeed I am perhaps being generous in
referring merely to stagnation rather than decline....

"Yet we live in an age in which many revolutionary socialist groups predict a
growth in the revolutionary left -- including whatever their own organisation is
-- and indeed sometimes speak as if it's already happening. So for someone from
within the revolutionary left -- like me -- to make this comment may be somewhat
uncharacteristic.

"There are two reasons why this stagnation might surprise people and therefore
requires explanation. One is historical precedent. Previous periods of systemic
crisis -- whether the First World War, the 1930s or the post-1968 era -- have
led to a growth in the revolutionary left or in other sections of the Left (or
both). So shouldn't that be happening now?

"The second reason is that it's not like we have a shortage of resistance to
capitalism, or particular aspects of capitalist crisis, in the current period.
Shouldn't such phenomena -- Arab revolutions, Occupy, general strikes in
southern Europe, a widespread anti-establishment mood etc -- find expression in
the growth of the revolutionary left?" [Quoted from
here.]

So does John Rees:

"[T]here
have been some notable, in some cases historic, movements of resistance. The
global anti-capitalist movement which began with mass demonstrations against the
World Trade Organisation in Seattle in 1999 was a signal event. It brought
together climate change and environmental activists with trade union
demonstrators -- the famous teamster-turtle alliance. It named the enemy in the
most general political terms: capitalism. And it self-identified as an
'anti-capitalist' movement. This was new. I remember watching the BBC main news
bulletin where the commentator said 'anti-capitalist protestors took over the
centre of Seattle today'. I'd rarely heard the BBC use the word 'capitalist',
let alone the words 'anti-capitalist' before. This term became the hallmark of
many demonstrations to this day. It had a great strength: an immediate
identification of the entire system as the problem. But there was also a
corresponding weakness: a much lower level of direct workplace struggle than in
the 1968-1975 period.

"Even so the
movement's political strength became greater as the anti-war movement arose,
involving many of the same forces, in response to the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq in 2002-2003. Again, just as the anti-capitalist movement had
popularised to millions of ordinary citizens language once the exclusive
property of the left, so the rise of the mass anti-war movement made
anti-imperialism a mass popular force on a scale that even exceeded that
achieved by the anti-Vietnam protests. At the same time, and partly as a
consequence, establishment politics became hollowed out to an unprecedented
degree. Faced with mainstream parties all of whom embraced neo-liberalism at
home and defended imperialism abroad the old system began to crack. Political
party membership fell and turnout in elections declined. Opinion polls revealed
that public faith in politicians, the police, the media and other pillars of the
status quo were at historic lows.

"And yet at the
same time the organisation of the left was also facing a crisis. The Labour Left
has probably never been weaker. The Communist Party left is much reduced after
the body blow of the East European revolutions of 1989, far longer and deeper in
their effect on the left than many thought at the time. The revolutionary far
left has, in all too many cases, retreated into sectarian isolation.

"In fact the central paradox of left politics can
be formulated in this way: at a time when an unprecedented level of ideological
radicalism have seized large sections of the working class the far left has been
unable to strengthen itself because it is wedded to 1970s models of industrial
militancy which prevents it from understanding the tasks before it." [Preface to
the new edition of The ABC of Socialism, quoted from
here. Accessed 21/06/2014.]

Of course, Rees's explanation for the failure
of the far-left to make any progress is itself misplaced; even sections of the
left that have abandoned "1970's models of industrial militancy" have made
little or no progress. We must look elsewhere for the reason, into areas
dialecticians like Rees refuse even to consider. It is quite remarkable that
comrades who will in one breath extol the virtues of
HM, will in other
refuse to apply it to the left.

Indeed, this can be said of Alex Callinicos's
recent survey of the decline of the far-left:

"The paradox of the present
situation is that capital is weak -- but the radical left is much weaker.
Alternatively, capital is economically weak, but much stronger politically, less
because of mass ideological commitment to the system than because of the
weakness of credible anti-capitalist alternatives....

"By contrast today, nearly
seven years after the financial crash began, the radical left has not been
weaker for decades. We have seen the following pattern over the past 15 years.
The period between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s can be described as an era
of good feelings for the radical left. In the immediate aftermath of the
collapse of the Stalinist regimes in 1989-91 neoliberalism had seemed
all-conquering. But the Seattle protests of November 1999 marked the beginning
of a wave of new movements of resistance demanding another kind of globalisation
that were based not just in the North but in parts of the Global South. The
events of 9/11 and the proclamation of a global state of emergency by the
administration of George W Bush provoked an extension of resistance from the
economic to the political, as the altermondialiste [Anti-Globalisation -- RL]
networks that had emerged from Seattle and the July 2001 protests at Genoa
launched the anti-war movement responsible for the unprecedented day of global
protest against the invasion of Iraq on 15 February 2003....

"But May 2005 represented the
high-water mark for the radical left in Europe. Afterwards the process went into
reverse. Sometimes this took the form of organisational implosion: the splits in
the
SSP in 2006 and in Respect in 2007 removed the most serious left electoral
challenges the Labour Party had faced for decades. Sometimes there were
electoral reverses, such as that suffered by the Bloco in 2011. Sometimes it was
both:
Rifondazione cracked up as a result of both electoral eclipse and a series
of splits following its participation in 2006-8 in the centre-left coalition
government of Romano Prodi, who continued the neoliberal and pro-war policies of
their predecessors.

"Disarray set in among the
radical left before the onset of the economic crisis: thus George Galloway
launched his attack on the role of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) within
Respect in August 2007, just as the credit crunch was beginning to develop. But
the process of fragmentation has continued against the background of the crisis.
Although developments in France have exercised a major influence on the radical
left internationally, new political formations came relatively late there: the
Parti
de Gauche, which split from the
Socialist Party in 2008, and the
Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste (NPA) launched at the beginning of 2009 by the
LCR. But, bested electorally by the Parti de Gauche and its allies (mainly
the Communist Party) in the Front de Gauche, the NPA suffered an agonising
internal crisis in 2011-12. This ended with the departure in July 2012 of
several hundred members, including many of the historic cadre of the LCR, to
form
Gauche Anticapitaliste as part of the
Front
de Gauche.

"Meanwhile, the other major
organisation of the European revolutionary left, the SWP, suffered no less than
four splits -- one in the immediate aftermath of the Respect crisis in 2010, one
involving a group of mainly young members in Glasgow in 2011, and two associated
with the intense crisis in 2012-13 precipitated by allegations of rape against a
leading member. This crisis saw about 700 members (including, once again, some
of the historic cadre of the SWP) leave and three new far-left groups formed. Of
course, this particular drama underlines that the splits had very specific
driving forces: setting the SWP's troubles in context in no way dismisses the
issues of oppression and women's liberation that for many were the central
issue. But the broader pattern seems undeniable, as is indicated by the internal
divisions that affected the largest far-left group in the United States, the
International Socialist Organization, in 2013-14....

"Some 35 years ago, at the
dawn of the neoliberal era, Chris Harman wrote a memorable analysis
in this journal of the crisis the European revolutionary left was then
experiencing. That crisis was much more severe and concentrated than what we are
currently experiencing because it represented the collapse, in an astonishingly
short period of time, of many of the quite substantial far-left formations that
had emerged during the great upturn in workers' struggles of the late 1960s and
early 1970s -- formations that had grown very quickly, but that proved to lack
the political strength to cope with the downturn in class struggle that
developed in the second half of the 1970s. The present crisis is much more
diffuse, but in some ways more threatening, because the revolutionary left is
much weaker than it was in 1979. This makes the attempts to split and even to
destroy organisations such as the NPA and the SWP so irresponsible. These
parties represent decades of concentrated efforts by thousands of militants to
develop credible revolutionary alternatives. They are not to be thrown away
lightly." [Callinicos (2014), quoted from
here.
Link added.]

In the above, Callinicos makes no attempt to
apply a class analysis to this decline (a long-term decline --, despite
the upturns Callinicos notes, which were merely temporary upswings in the
overall picture -- that has been on-going now for several generations); for far
too many the far-left is now largely a toxic brand. Callinicos not only fails to
note this, he ignores his and the SWP's role in helping to accelerate it. To be
sure, Callinicos analyses several other plausible factors that have contributed
to the weakness of the far-left of late, but he signally fails to account for
its propensity to fragment (he just notes that it happens) and its constant
tendency to decay into crises of corruption (which, in the case of the UK-SWP,
he mentions but soon shrugs off).

"[Break]
from the toy Bolshevism that has led to the dominance of monsters like
Gerry Healy
and to grotesque fractures such have been discussed on these pages, a practice
that has meant the Left has failed to grow in circumstances that have looked
favourable....

"The Left
can point to some successes out of proportion with its size: the Anti Nazi
League, the poll tax campaign, the Stop the War campaign. Have these
mobilisations resulted in any genuine lasting and durable implantation of the
Left? I'm afraid not. It has to be discussed why not. The lessons have to be
learned. Then maybe left organisations can handle incidents such as the one
which triggered this whole debate with integrity and humanity and not a squalid
clumsiness that discredits it." [Quoted from
here; accessed 13/01/2013]

This malaise isn't just a UK or even a
European phenomenon; here are the thoughts of a US comrade:

"We should
start with the fact that the objective situation is tough and that the left
everywhere is having a hard time. Practically no organization or model has
succeeded as a consistent challenge to the neoliberal order, and the most
inspiring efforts in Greece and Egypt have stalled and been savagely turned
back, respectively. The US working class is disorganized and reeling under blow
after blow of austerity. The picture is defeat and flaming wreckage all across
the front line, and, in Richard Seymour's words, pointing to the example of 'the
CTU [Chicago Teachers Union -- RL] will not save us, comrades.' The American
capitalist class has done pretty well under Obama's leadership, and
profitability is at record levels (though they're not out of the woods of the
Great Recession just yet).

"So yes, the
world is not making it particularly easy to build a revolutionary socialist
organization at the moment (and perhaps for quite a while now). That also makes
it more likely that we're getting parts of our perspective and orientation
wrong. We cannot allow reference to the objective conditions to become a block
to self-evaluation, self-criticism, and change. And on the one hand, to say that
objective conditions have been extremely difficult for the past five years does
not square with our sense that the onset of the Great Recession would open a new
era of radicalization that would allow us to operate more effectively and grow.
Nor does it square with the advances in struggle in the Arab Spring and Occupy.
Nor does it square with the assertion that there is a 'continuing
radicalization' going on right now." [Sid Patel, quoted from
here. Accessed 08/02/2014. Quotation marks altered to conform
to the conventions adopted at this site.]

And, here are the comments of the
ISO-Renewal Faction:

"The international revolutionary
Left is in the throes of a serious crisis. This crisis has manifested itself
most clearly in organizational terms in the debacle of the Socialist Workers
Party in the UK; in the splits in the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste in France;
and in the attack on the revolutionary Left within SYRIZA. In practical terms,
it has manifested in the inability of the Left to steer major events: the
stalemate in the struggle against austerity in Greece and the growth of fascism;
the twists and turns of the Egyptian revolution; and the reversals suffered by
the defeat of the Wisconsin Uprising, the dramatic repression of Occupy, and
even the setbacks in spring 2013 after the heroic Chicago Teachers' Union strike
testify to this fact. And on the theoretical plane, there remain large questions
about the character of neoliberalism and the current crisis; the shape of the
international working class at the end of the neoliberal period; and the
strategies and methods for the Left to organize a real struggle against a system
in crisis. It is a crisis that requires a deep re-examination of all previous
assumptions on the part of the entire international Left.

"We believe this crisis
has impacted the ISO as well, though we think that it is a more significant
development than simply 'the demoralization and disorientation experienced by
the Left in the wake of Occupy'. While the SWP's crisis is far more serious than
ours, we believe both crises (as well as the others mentioned) grow out of the
same general political background common to the entire revolutionary Left. In
the ISO, the response to this crisis has shifted from a perceived new political
openness in the first half of the year (most notably
Ahmed Shawki's talk at Socialism 2013 on Perspectives for the Left, which
was interpreted as such by people well beyond the ISO); to a debate around the
March on Washington and the United Front; to a closing of ranks, a renewed focus
on routines and low-level political education, and a retreat from
outward-looking events such as the regional fall Marxism conferences. The
assertion in the NC report that the ISO was 'under attack' was quite stunning to
us. But it has now become clear that the 'attack' is really a bout of
self-doubt, in our estimation brought on by the same factors that have
precipitated the crisis of the international Left: a misunderstanding of the
neoliberal period and its crisis, and a frustration at the ability of the Left
to advance." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 08/02/2014. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site. Link added.]

But, who wants to join a movement that will
in all likelihood split before they receive their membership card?
Or, which will descend into yet another wave of scandal, corruption and cover-up before they
attend their first paper sale?

"If you read the attempts
that have been made so far by comrades (here and elsewhere) to account for this
and other crises, you will struggle long and hard and to no avail to find a
materialist, class-based analysis why this sort of thing keeps happening.
Comrades blame such things on this or that foible or personality defect of that
or this comrade, or on this or that party structure. If we only had a different
CC, or a new constitution, everything would be hunky dory. If only the climate
in the party were more open and democratic...

"Do we argue this with respect to anything else? If only we had a different
Prime Minister, different MPs or Union Leaders! Or, maybe a new constitution with
proportional representation allowing us to elect left-wing representatives to
Parliament..., yada yada.

"But this problem is endemic right across our movement, and has been for
many generations, just as it afflicts most sections of bourgeois society. In which
case, we need a new, class-based, materialist explanation as to why it keeps
happening, or it will keep on happening." [Re-edited, and quoted,
for example, from
here.]01a

And yet, comrades still refuse to approach
the crisis that has recently engulfed the UK-SWP with just such an analysis; they still refuse to apply Marxism to
Marxism itself! A point brought out recently in another blog (although the
author neglected to develop an
HM analysis of this
crisis, too!):

"Someone, probably the late
John Sullivan, once pointed out the irony that parties adhering firmly to
historical materialism are even firmer in refusing to apply it to their own
organisations; instead insisting, like the best idealists, that they be judged
on their programme alone." [Quoted from
here; accessed 01/01/2014. Link added.]

In its place, comrades prefer to offer and
to read the sort of
superficial analysis they would heavily criticise if it were applied to any
other group, or, indeed, any other topic:

"There is currently a huge
crisis playing itself out within the SWP, the party I have been a member of the
past five years. Like many of us warned, this has now spread beyond our ranks
into the national press, and has been even been picked up by our international
affiliate groups in the
International Socialist Tendency. Regardless of [any?] individual's
opinion on the details of this case, it can no longer be denied that this issue
will create severe repercussions for the party. The CC have failed to lead and
much of the membership is demanding an explanation. It is also a dead end to
argue that this should stay within the party and we should simply draw a line
under it. This is in the national press and silence and failure to recognise the
problem would be political suicide with the very people we hope to work with,
the movement....

"We need an entirely new
leadership, and we need to comprehensively overhaul all the democratic
structures of the party." [Quoted from
here; accessed 14/01/2013. Bold emphasis and link added.]

Another UK-SWP comrade had this to say in the
March 2013 Special Pre-Conference Bulletin:

"The question therefore becomes how
do we organise ourselves in any given period, and, more particularly, how do we
need to organise today?

"It ought to be clear to everybody
that our present arrangements are not provably fit for purpose. Either that
or we are the unluckiest party in the world having suffered a string of crises
(Respect, Counterfire, IS Group, Disputes Committee) in rapid succession. In
a situation like this there can be a tendency to 'batten down the hatches', seek
internal scapegoats and meet internal criticism with impatience, censure or even
disciplinary measures....

"[The
following] are some organisational areas...where I think we currently fall short
of what is needed to make us a more successful and effective Leninist party."
[Quoted from
here, p.68. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site. Accessed 08/03/2013. Although the criticisms
and suggestions this comrade then proceeds to make look eminently reasonable,
they fall far short of what is required.]

Here is an account from across the Atlantic
concerning the collapse of the US-SWP (but the points it makes are clearly far
more general in scope):

"This
process can be described by the term 'regression to the mean.' In statistics,
that term describes the tendency of 'outliers' -- facts or observations that are
substantially different from the average -- to shift over time towards the
average. In Marxist politics, it means that a small group that achieves
excellence in one or another respect will tend to lose these characteristics
over time, unless its strong points are reinforced through immersion in broad
social struggles.

"The
'mean' -- that is, the profile of the average small Marxist group - includes
these features:

"A conviction that the small group, and it alone, represents the historic
interests of the working class.

"A high ideological fence separating members from the ideas and discussions of
the broader Marxist movement.

"A hostile relationship to other Marxist currents.

"A haughty attitude to social movements: the group's interventions, when they
occur, focus on self-promotion and recruitment.

"An internal discipline aimed not at fending off blows of the class enemy but at
restricting discussion and keeping the members in line.

"A conservative approach to Marxist doctrine, aptly summarized by Marx in 1868:
'The sect sees the justification for its existence and its "point of honour" not
in what it has in common with the class movement but in the particular
shibboleth which distinguishes it from it.'" [Taken from
here. Accessed 15/01/2014. Quotation marls altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]

However, no attempt is made to provide a
class analysis. Indeed, as far as can be determined, none of the articles posted
at the site from which the above was taken (which constitute a detailed history
of the decline of the US-SWP) even so much as attempt to apply Marxism to
Marxism itself. Why is this?

I will endeavour to answer that question in what
follows.

Nevertheless, "crises" like this are endemic on the
far-left. As if organisational tinkering can affect issues related to the
class origin and class position of those who 'lead' our movement and who control
its ideas! As if simply immersing the party in wider activity can erase awkward
facts about the class origin of our 'leaders', and their core theory!

And, there is no sign that comrades in the
UK-SWP 'opposition' (or elsewhere, for that matter)are even asking the right questions. Here is the latest from
this faction:

"In just a few weeks, the
desire to analyse how we got to this point has resulted in many faction members,
both longstanding and new cadre, starting the process of attempting to fill
some theoretical gaps. This is fantastically encouraging, and a glimpse at
how political pride can be rebuilt and how fruitful honest collective discussion
is. The very fact of the conference is a victory, but if we accept that silence
must follow, then we have not achieved what we set out to achieve." [Megan T., and
Mike G., quoted from
here; accessed 09/03/2103. Bold emphasis added.]

Other than arguing for an open and democratic
party (an excellent aim in itself), filling the above "theoretical gaps" doesn't
seem to involve any attempt to develop an HM-analysis of the
class origin and class position of the party 'leadership', and their commitment to
thought-forms (DM/MD)
appropriated from the class enemy.

Which means, of course, that this sort of
thing will keep on happening.

This Essay and the other two mentioned in the
Preface are aimed at approaching
catastrophes like these from an entirely new angle, providing for the first
time an HM-explanation why our movement is
constantly in crisis, constantly fragmenting, constantly screwing-up -- and
what can be done about it.

In addition to outlining a class analysis of
Marxism itself, Part Two of Essay Nine will also aim to show (1) How and why
DM has
been, and still is detrimental to Marxism, (2) How and why it has assisted in
the fragmentation of our
movement, (3) How and why it has contributed to the long-term failure of Dialectical
Marxism itself, and (4)
How and why it helps convince dialectically-distracted comrades that there are in fact
no problems that need addressing (in this respect) -- and, even if there were,
MD (supposedly our core
theory!) and the class origin of leading Marxists have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it!

As intimated above, this Essay will also show that (5) The
class origin of leading members of Dialectical-Marxist parties is one of the
main reasons why revolutionary politics is deeply sectarian,profoundly unreasonable,
serially abusive, alarmingly fragmentary and notoriously ineffective. DM, of course,
simply aggravates
this condition, making a bad situation worse. I also explain how and why
it manages to do this.

Part
One demonstrated that DM not only doesn't,
it can't
represent a generalisation of working class experience; nor can it express their
"world-view", whoever tries to sell
it to them.

Worse still, it can't even represent a generalisation of the experience of the revolutionary party!

It was also shown in Part One that DM
can't be "brought" to workers
"from the outside" (as Lenin seemed to indicate -- please note
the use of the word "seemed" here!), becauseit has yet to be brought
to a sufficient level of clarity so that its own theorists can even so much
as begin
to understand it themselves,beforethey think to proselytise unfortunate workers.

In that sense, therefore, dialecticians are still waiting for their own
theory to be "brought" to them -- from the "inside"!

However, what has not been established yet is how it is
even conceivable that generations of leading revolutionaries with impeccable
socialist credentials could have imported into the workers' movement ideas
derived from the class enemy --, or at least from Philosophers who gave
theoretical voice to the interests of that class.

Surely, this alone shows that the allegations made
in these Essays are completely misguided.

Or, so it could be argued.

Of course, even its own most
loyal and avid supporters can't deny that
dialectics had to be introduced into the workers' movement from the outside; neither Hegel,
Feuerbach, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky,
Stalin or Mao were
proletarians.
Moreover, there is no evidence that workers in the 19th
century were all that interested in Hegel's Logic.

[The claim that
Dietzgen,
for example, is an exception to the above generalisation was batted out of the park
here.]

As is
well-known, Hegel's system is the most absolute form of Idealism ever invented,
and it is situated right at the heart of an ancient ruling-class
tradition (aspects of which are examined in detail in Essay Twelve and Fourteen
(summaries here
and here)).

"The history of philosophy and the history of
social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling
'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified
doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the
development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists
precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the
foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate
continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of
philosophy, political economy and socialism.

"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive
and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable
with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It
is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth
century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and
French socialism." [Lenin,
Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone
added.]

Despite this, the importation of Hegel's
ideas into Marxism is often justified by comrades on the basis that he lived at
a time when the bourgeoisie were the revolutionary class, and so his ideas
weren't
as 'ideologically-tainted' -- so to speak -- as those of later thinkers.

Now, that excuse might work in relation to theorists
like Smith
or
Ricardo,
but it can't work with Hegel. Not only did he live in
politically backward Germany, where there was no such revolutionary bourgeois
class, his ideas represented both a continuation of ruling-class thought and a
throwback to earlier mystical ideas about nature and society. [On this, see
Essay Twelve Part Five and Essay Fourteen Part One (links above).]

Moreover, by no stretch of the imagination
were his ideas scientific, unlike those of Smith and Ricardo.

Nor can it be argued that Marx derived HM
from Hegel; in fact (as Lenin himself half admits) both he and Hegel were influenced by the Scottish
Historical School (of
Ferguson,
Millar,
Hume,
Steuart, Robertson,
Anderson, and
Smith).01 If anything, Hegel's work
helped slow
down the formation of Marx's scientific ideas, by mystifying them.

It could be argued that Marx derived other
important concepts from Hegel (such as alienation, and species being), but these
ideas (or ones very much like them) can be found in
Rousseau,
Fichte and
Schelling (who
were far clearer thinkers than Hegel ever was).
Moreover, these concepts are easily replaced with materialist analogues -- which
explains why Marx subsequently dropped these terms, and adopted others. [On this,
see White (1996).]

Finally, no dialectician, as far as I know, would
argue the same for other figures who were writing at about this time, and who were
much closer to the class action (as it were). Does anyone think this of
Berkeley?
And yet he lived in and around what was the leading capitalist country on earth at the time:
Great Britain. Or, of
Shaftesbury and
Mandeville? Slap bang in the middle these two. And, it is little use pointing
out that this pair wrote shortly after the
reactionto the English Revolution,
since Hegel did so, too, after the reaction to the French Revolution. Nor is it any use arguing that these
two were card-carrying ruling-class hacks, since the same can be said of Hegel.
Or, even that one of them was an aristocrat; it may be news to some,
but Hegel wasn't a coal miner!

Indeed, the only reason Hegel is
chosen for special treatment is because of contingent features of Marx's
own biography. Had Marx's life taken a different course, or had Hegel died of
typhoid forty years before he actually did, does anyone think we'd now be
bothering with dialectics? It is no surprise therefore to find that Marx himself moved
away from Hegel and Philosophy all his life.

[The first of these controversial allegations
was substantiated in
Part One of this Essay;
the second
here.]

In that case, and contrary to what Lenin
said, we should exclude Marx himself (at least in his more mature work) from the above seriously compromised,
boss-class pedigree.

Independently of this, it could be objected
that this allegedly class-compromised background isn't sufficient to condemn
DM/MD. After all, it could be argued that the
advancement of humanity has always been predicated on practices, concepts and
theories developed by individuals freed from the need to toil each day to stay
alive -- for example, the work and ideas of scientists, philosophers,
mathematicians, technologists, and the like. Surely, this doesn't automatically
impugn every idea drawn from outside the workers' movement. Neither does it mean
that philosophical notions are in general of no use to revolutionaries. Indeed,
denouncing certain beliefs just because they are alien to the
working-class is not only ultra-left, it is inconsistent with key ideas found in HM itself. In that case,
the fact that DM/MD
is based on Hegel's system doesn't automatically malign it, especially if the latter has been given a
materialist make-over (as Marx himself argued), and has subsequently been tested in practice.

Furthermore, the origin of
DM/MD
goes back many centuries, and is related in complex ways to the development
of class society and thus of humanity in general. Admittedly, that implicates this process in the formation of
ideas representing the theoretical interests of former and current
ruling-classes. But, even granting that, such ideas have also
featured in the overall development of human knowledge -- indeed, many such
have been integral to the advancement of science itself. Considerations like
these do not compromise DM/MD in any
way; on the contrary, as Lenin noted, this complex set of connections (linking
DM/MD with the
very best of human endeavour) constitutes one of its strengths. Dialectical thought is
thus not only
part of the theoretical maturing process of humanity, it is a vital component in
its future development.

(1) DM-theses make no sense. Anyone who thinks otherwise is
invited to say clearly (and for the first time ever in well over a
hundred and forty years of its adherents not trying all that hard) what sense they do
make. As the Essays posted at this site show, anyone who attempts that modern-day
'labour of
Sisyphus'
will face an impossible task.

(2) DM/MD-concepts
hinder the development revolutionary theory and practice. We saw this in more detail in Essay Ten
Part One -- for example, in
connection with Lenin's advice relating to a certain glass tumbler. [Other examples
will be given below.]

(3) DM and MD are locked into a tradition of thought that has an impeccable
ruling-class pedigree.
No wonder then that it hangs like an
albatross around our necks, to say nothing of the negative effect it has
had on generations of comrades (these are detailed below, too).

(4) Although many claim that science is
intimately connected with earlier philosophical and religious/mystical forms-of-thought, this is in fact less than half the truth. Indeed, materialist
and technological aspects of science haven't been as heavily dependent on such
ruling-class ideas as many believe. [That rather bold claim
will be substantiated in Essay Thirteen Part Two (when it is published sometime
in 2014).]

[More on these below, and
in Part One. On the phrase
"common understanding", see here.]

(6) The materialist flip allegedly
performed on Hegel's system, so that its 'rational core' might be appropriated by
revolutionaries, has been shown not in fact to have been through
180 degrees, as is often claimed, but through the full 360.

(7) It isn't being claimed here that DM is false
because of its ruling-class pedigree; it is in fact being maintained
that this 'theory' is far too confused to be
classified as true or false. Nevertheless, several its
deleterious effects can in fact be traced to ruling-class forms-of-thought.

(9) Finally, and perhaps more importantly, DM/MD has played
its own not inconsiderable part in rendering Dialectical Marxism the
long-term
failure we see before us today. In addition, DM/MD has also helped
aggravate the serious
personal, organisational and political corruption that generations of petty-bourgeois party
'leaders' have brought in their train.

These are serious allegations; those that
have not already been substantiated in other Essays will be expanded upon and defended in what follows.

In spite of this, it could be argued that
the above counter-response ignores the fact that some of the best
class fighters in history have not only put dialectics into practice, they have woven it
into the fabric of each and every classic Marxist text. Indeed, without it there would
be no Marxist theory. How could this have been possible
if the above accusations are correct? And what alternative theory and/or
literature (that has been tested in the 'heat of battle', as it were) can Ms
Lichtenstein point to that recommend her ideas as superior to those found in this proven tradition, one stretching back now over
150 years?

Most of the above (volunteered) response is demonstrably
misguided; the
link between DM
and (successful) practice was severed in Essay Ten
Part One, and will be further undermined
in what follows.

Furthermore, very few of the classic Marxist texts
(that is, outside the DM-cannon) mention this 'theory' (except in passing). Indeed, as
Part One of Essay Nine
shows (here and
here), Das
Kapital itself is largely a DM-free zone. But, even if this weren't
the case, the fact that Dialectical Marxism has been such a long-term failure
ought raise serious questions about the malign influence this theory
has had on HM and
on revolutionary practice in general.

Indeed, if Newton's theory had been as
spectacularly unsuccessful as Dialectical Marxism has been, his ideas would have
been still-born as they rolled off the press.

In addition, a continuing commitment
to dialectics just because it was good enough for the 'founding fathers'
of our movement -- and for no other reason -- is itself based on the sort of
servile, dogmatic and conservative faith
one finds
in most religions.1b

There is, indeed, something decidedly
unsavoury in witnessing erstwhile radicals appealing to tradition alone as their only
reason for maintaining their commitment to such class-compromised ideas --
especially since this doctrine hasn't
served us too well for over a century, and which remains unexplained to this day.

As it turns out, the reason why the majority
of revolutionaries not only willingly accept the alien-class ideas
encapsulated in MD,
but cling to them like terminally-insecure limpets, is connected
with the following four considerations:

"The foundation of irreligious criticism is:
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the
self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to
himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract
being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state,
society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted
consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world.
Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its
logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its
moral sanction, its solemn complement, and itsuniversal basis of consolation
and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence
since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle
against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world
whose spiritual aroma is religion.

"Religious
suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering
and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of the people.

"The abolition of religion as the illusory
happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call
on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to
give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion
is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which
religion is the halo." [Marx
(1975b),
p.244. Bold emphases alone added.]

Of course, no one is suggesting that
Dialectical Marxism is a religion --
but it certainly functions in a way that makes it analogous to one.

Indeed, as Marx also noted:

"Feuerbach's
great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975c), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis
and link added.]

So, "philosophy is nothing but religion
rendered into thought" -- in other words, it is a far more abstract source of
consolation.

These serious allegations, and their materialist
background, will now be explained.

Plainly, revolutionaries are human beings
with ideas in their heads, and every single one of them had/has a class origin.
The overwhelming majority of those who have led our movement, or who have
influenced its ideas, didn't come from the working class. Even
worker-revolutionaries, if they
become full-time or 'professional revolutionaries', become de-classé -- or
even petty-bourgeois -- as a result. Since the social being of these comrades can be
traced back to their class origins and current class position, it is no
surprise to learn that they have allowed "ruling ideas" to dominate their
thought.

However, the allegation that these
comrades have appropriated such ideas -- for the same sorts of reasons that the religious hold
onto their beliefs --, and that this is partly because of their class origin
and/or current class position --, will be regarded by dialecticians as so obviously wrong
that it will be rejected out-of-hand as "crude reductionism".

Nevertheless, as far as I am aware, no
Marxist Dialectician has subjected the origin of DM, or the reasons for its
acceptance by the vast majority of comrades, to any sort of class, or even
materialist, analysis.

To be sure, they will often subject the ideas of their opponents and/or enemies (both Marxist and non-Marxist --
examples given below) to some form of
impromptu class analysis, but not their own adoption of boss-class
thought-forms, nor yet the appropriation of these ideas by most Marxists -- and certainly not
to their appropriation by all leading
Marxists.

This
suggests that dialecticians see themselves as exempt from, or above, a Marxist analysis
of the origin of their own ideas, and that they somehow think they are immune from the material
constraints that affect the rest of humanity.

Nevertheless, it will be maintained here that the above
comrades do indeed hold on to alien-class ideas -- even if they aren't fully aware of
their nature --, and that they do this for at least four reasons:

First: Because of their petty-bourgeois
and/or
non-working class origin -- and as a result of their socialisation and the 'superior' education they
have generally received in bourgeois society -- the vast majority of (the above
sort of) Marxists have had
"ruling ideas", or ruling-class forms-of-thought, forced down their throats
almost from day one.

[More on this below. See also Essay
Two, and Essay Three Parts
One and
Two.]

Second: Because Dialectical Marxism
has been so spectacularly
unsuccessful, and has been like this for so long, revolutionaries have had to convince themselves that (a)
This isn't really so,
(b) That the opposite is in fact the case, or that (c) This is only a
temporary state of affairs. They have to do this otherwise many of them would simply give up.
In view of the fact that they also hold that truth is tested in practice, they
have been forced to conclude that one or more of (a), (b) and (c) is correct.

However, because dialectics teaches that
appearances are "contradicted" by underlying "essences", it is
able to fulfil a
unique and highly specific role
in this regard, motivating or rationalising (a), (b) and/or (c). In this way, it supplies comrades with much needed
consolation in the face of 'apparent' failure, convincing them that everything
is in fact fine with the core theory -- or that things will change for the
better, one day. This
then 'allows'
them to ignore the
long-term
failure of Dialectical Marxism, rationalising it as a mere "appearance", and hence
either false, or
illusory.

So, faced with 150 years of set-backs,
defeats and disasters, revolutionaries, who will inform you in all seriousness
that "truth is tested in practice", will respond in the very next breath with: "Well, that doesn't prove
dialectics is wrong!"

Hence, just like the religious, who can look at
all the evil in the world and still see it as an expression of the 'Love of God',
and who
will make all things well in the end, dialecticians look at the last 150
years and still see the 'Logic of History' moving their way, and that all will
be well in the end, too. This means that the theory that prevents them from
facing reality is the very same theory that also prevents them from examining
the role that DM/MD have played in all this,
inviting yet another
generation of set-backs and disasters by masking these unwelcome facts.

Apparently, therefore, the only two things
in the entire universe that
aren't interconnected are the long term failure of
Dialectical Marxism and its core theory!

Third: Just like the Bible, which
supplies
its acolytes with ample reasons to accuse others of not 'understanding the Word
of God', DM, with its own 'sacred texts', provides dialecticians with
an obscure theory that 'allows' them to claim that other, rival DM-theorists do not
'understand' dialectics -- or that they ignore/misuse it --, and that only they
can grasp its inner meaning. This then 'allows' them to anathematise and castigate
these others as
anti-Marxist. In short, it puts in the hands of inveterate sectarians (of
which Marxism has had more than its fair share) an almost infinitely pliable,
ideological weapon that is capable of proving anything at all and its
opposite (often this trick is performed by the very same theorist) -- simply because it glories in
contradiction.

[Again, scores of examples (no exaggeration!) of this
phenomenon are given below.]

Fourth: It provides dialecticians with
an exclusivising device that sets them above the common herd (or those
who are lost in the banalities of 'commonsense' -- the latter of which,
like
Marx, actually trust ordinary language); this now only serves to confirm them in their
self-appointed, pre-eminent role in the class war. In short, DM is the
ideology of substitutionist elements within Marxism.

The above phenomenon also has the untoward effect of
rendering such comrades unbelievably arrogant, which further motivates them into treating
others in the movement (often these are in the same party!) with haughty contempt,
studied indifference, or even callous inhumanity. After all, if you are
bearers of 'the word from off the mountain', anyone who disagrees with you deserves
ostracism and expulsion, at best, imprisonment or death, at worst.

[These serious allegations will be substantiated
throughout the rest of this Essay.]

Despite this, it might still be wondered how
this relates to anything that is
even remotely relevant to the ideas entertained by hard-headed revolutionary
atheists. Surely, it could be argued, any attempt to trace a commitment to
MD to its origin in allegedly alienated
thought-forms is both a reductionist and an Idealist error.

"[T]he defeat of the
1905 revolution, like all such defeats, carried confusion and demoralisation into the
ranks of the revolutionaries…. The forward rush of the revolution had helped
unite the leadership…on strategic questions and so…intellectual differences
could be left to private disagreement. But when defeat magnifies every tactical
disagreement, forcing revolutionaries to derive fresh strategies from a
re-examination of the fundamentals of Marxism, theoretical differences were
bound to become important. As
Tony Cliff explains:

"'With politics apparently failing to
overcome the horrors of the Tsarist regime, escape into the realm of
philosophical speculation became the fashion….'

"Philosophical fashion took a
subjectivist, personal, and sometimes religious turn….
Bogdanov drew
inspiration from the theories of physicist
Ernst Mach and philosopher
Richard
Avenarius…. [Mach retreated] from
Kant's ambiguous idealism to the pure idealism
of Berkeley and
Hume….

"It was indeed Mach and Bogdanov's
'ignorance
of dialectics' that allowed them to 'slip into idealism.' Lenin was right to
highlight the link between Bogdanov's adoption of idealism and his
failure to react correctly to the downturn in the level of the struggle in
Russia." [Rees (1998), pp.173-79, quoting Cliff
(1975), p.290. Bold emphases and links added.
Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. (However, I can find no reference to "dialectics" in Cliff's book.)]

Cliff continues:

"With politics apparently failing to
overcome the horrors of the Tsarist regime, escape into the realm of
philosophical speculation became the fashion. And in the absence of any
contact with a real mass movement, everything had to be proved from scratch
-- nothing in the traditions of the movement, none of its fundamentals, was
immune from constant questioning.

"...In this discussion
Bogdanov,
Lunacharsky,
Bazarov and others tried to combine marxism with the
neo-Kantian theory of knowledge put forward by Ernst Mach, and Richard
Avenarius. Lunacharsky went as far as to speak openly in favour of fideism.
Lunacharsky used religious metaphors, speaking about 'God-seeking' and
'God-building'.
Gorky was influenced by Bogdanov and Lunacharsky....

"Lenin's reaction was very
sharp indeed. He wrote to Gorky, 'The Catholic priest corrupting young
girls...is much less dangerous precisely to "democracy" than a priest without
his robes, a priest without crude religion, an ideologically equipped and
democratic priest preaching the creation and invention of a god.'" [Cliff
(1975), pp.290-91. Bold emphases and links added. Quotation marks altered to conform
to the conventions adopted at this site.]

It is quite clear from this that the
experience of defeat (and the lack of materialist input from a mass working-class
movement) directed the attention of certain revolutionaries toward Idealism
and the search for a mystical explanation for the serious set-backs Russian Marxists
had witnessed in and around 1905.
Plainly, that search provided these comrades with some form of consolation
-- just as Marx had alleged of religious belief pure and simple, and as Lenin
himself implied.

But, there is
another outcome that Rees and others have clearly failed to notice: this
major set-back also turned Lenin toward philosophy and dialectics. These were subjects he
had largely ignored up until then.2 While it is true that Bogdanov and the
rest turned to Mach, Berkeley,
Subjective Idealism, and other assorted
irrationalisms, it is equally clear that Lenin,
too, looked to Hegel and Hermetic Mysticism.

Nevertheless, Lenin's warning shows that
revolutionaries themselves aren't immune to the pressures that
lead human beings in general to seek consolationin order to counteract
disappointment, demoralisation and alienation. As we have seen, Lenin was well
aware that alien-class
ideas, which 'satisfy' such needs, could enter the revolutionary movement from the "outside"
at such times.

Even worse disappointments confronted Lenin a few years later
when World War One broke out. Kevin Anderson takes up
the story (without perhaps appreciating its significance):

"The outbreak of World War 1
in 1914 shattered European liberals' belief in peaceful evolutionary progress.
To Marxists, however, most of whom already believed that capitalism was a
violent and warlike system, an equally great shock occurred when, yielding to
the pressure of domestic patriotic sentiment, most of the world's socialist
parties, including the largest and most important one, the German Social
Democracy, came out in support of the war policies of their respective
governments.... So great was the shock to Lenin that when he saw a German
newspaper report on the German Social Democracy's vote to support the war, he
initially thought that it was a forgery by the Prussian military for propaganda
purposes....

"Once he arrived in Bern,
Lenin moved quickly in two seemingly contradictory directions: (1) he spent
long weeks in the library engaged in daily study of Hegel's writings, especially
the Science of Logic, writing hundreds of pages of notes on Hegel,
and (2)...he moved toward revolutionary defeatism...." [Anderson (1995), p.3.
Bold emphasis alone added. See also Krupskaya's remarks,
here.]2a

Just as Christians often turn to the Bible in
times of stress or depression, so Lenin turned to the writings of a Christian
Mystic, Hegel. Disappointed with the course of events in this "vale of tears",
Lenin turned toward a source of quasi-religious consolation, away from the
material world of woes, and toward a hidden world governed by invisible beings
('abstractions' and, of course, 'Being' itself) and mysterious forces
(the veritable trinity: 'contradiction', 'sublation', 'mediation').

Is it possible, then, that revolutionaries of
the calibre of Engels, Lenin, Luxembourg, Plekhanov and Trotsky were tempted to seek metaphysical
consolation of the sort depicted not only in this Essay, but attributed
to
others by Lenin himself? Is it conceivable that they opened themselves up to
the alien-class ideas that later found expression in
DM,
and for such reasons?

As we have seen in other Essays posted at
this site (especially Essay Three Parts One
and Two, Twelve
Part One, the rest of Essay
Twelve, and Essay Fourteen Part One
(summaries here and
here)), and as
Lenin himself acknowledged,
dialectics is
shot-through with ideas, concepts and thought-forms borrowed from Traditional Philosophy (which
ideas, concepts and thought-forms were in turn invented by theorists who,
undeniably,
had material and ideological interests in rationalising the status quo). Indeed, in many
places it is hard to tell the
difference between DM and open
and honest
Mysticism
(as Essay Fourteen Part One will demonstrate -- until then, check
this and
this out).

All this strongly suggests that the above
allegations aren't completely wide-of-the-mark.

On the contrary, as we will
see, they hit the bull's eye smack in the middle.

But, is there anything in
the class origin and class background of leading comrades that pre-disposed
them toward such an unwitting adoption of this rarefied form of boss-class ideology?

The first of these questions can
be answered quite easily by focussing on item
Four above, and then on the periods in which revolutionaries
invented, sought out, or reverted in a big way to using and/or appealing
to the classical concepts found in DM. Upon
examination, a reasonably clear correlation can be seen between periods of
downturn in the struggle and subsequent 're-discoveries' of Hegel and DM by aspiring
dialecticians -- with the opposite tendency kicking in, in more successful times.3

As Rees pointed out:

"...[D]efeat magnifies every
tactical disagreement, forcing revolutionaries to derive fresh strategies from a
re-examination of the
fundamentals of Marxism.... Lenin was right to highlight the link between
Bogdanov's adoption of idealism and his failure to react correctly to the
downturn in the level of the struggle in Russia." [Rees (1998), pp.173-79.]

It is no surprise, therefore, to find that most (if not all) of
Engels's work on the foundations of DM was written in the post 1860s downturn -- after
the massive struggles for the vote
in the UK (up to the
Reform
Act of 1867), following on the demise of
the Chartist Movement and after the
Paris Commune had been defeated
in 1871.4

Similarly, Lenin's philosophical/dialectical writings were largely confined to the period
after the defeat of the
1905
Revolution, and before the short-lived
successes of 1917.

Trotsky's dialectical commentaries
(including his Notebooks and his wrangles with
Burnham) date largely from
the 1930s, after the major reverses that took place in the post
1917-1923 period in
Europe (and internationally in
China,
and later in
Spain), and
following upon his
own isolation and
political quarantine
in that decade. He showed very little interest in such matters before then.5

Indeed, Trotsky admitted as much in his 1935
Diary:

"It's been about two
weeks since I have written much of anything: it's too difficult. I read
newspapers. French novels. Wittel's
book about Freud (a bad book by an envious pupil), etc. Today I wrote a little
about the interrelationship between the physiological determinism of brain
processes and the 'autonomy' of thought, which is subject to the laws of logic.
My philosophical interests have been growing during the last few years, but
alas, my knowledge is too insufficient, and too little time remains for a big
and serious work...." [Trotsky (1958), p.109.]

As should seem obvious from the above: (1)
Trotsky's interest in philosophy coincided with the period of his political
quarantine, and (2) He admits he had paid little attention to it before.

Stalin, too, only became obsessed with
dialectics after the defeat of the
Deborinites post-1929, and after the failure of the Chinese and German
revolutions (although he had written about this theory
in 1901). Likewise, Mao himself 'discovered' a fondness for this
Hermetic creed after
the crushing defeats of the 1920s.6

More recently, the obsessive devotion shown
by OTs toward the minutiae of DM follows a similar
pattern. Because (i) OTs invariably adopt a catastrophist view of everything
that happens (or is ever likely to happen) in capitalist society, and because (ii) OT
parties
are constantly splitting, they face continual disappointment and demoralisation. Naturally, such levels of
semi-permanent disillusionment
require regular and massive doses of highly potent DM-opiates.
To take just one example: an OT of the stature of
Ted Grant
only succeeded in 're-discovering' hardcore DM (alongside
Alan Woods) -- this taking shape in the form of RIRE -- after his party
had booted him out,
which expulsion itself followed upon the
catastrophic collapse of the
Militant Tendency in the 1980s.7

This regressive doctrine doesn't just
afflict the minds of OTs, NOTs show similar, but less chronic signs of
dialectical debilitation.

For example, the overt use of DM-concepts
by leading figures in the
UK-SWP
(a NOT-style party) only began in earnest after the downturn in the class
struggle in the late 1970s, and more specifically following upon the defeat of the
National Union of Miners
in 1985. In this respect, therefore, TAR itself represents perhaps the
high-water mark of this latest retreat into consolation by
UK-SWP theorists. [This was written before Rees
resigned from the UK-SWP!] The fact that this newfound interest in DM has nothing to
do with theoretical innovation (and everything to do with repetition, consolation
andreassurance) can be seen from the additional fact that TAR adds nothing new
to the debate (on DM), it merely repeats significant parts of it, albeit from a
different perspective -- for the gazillionth time!8

Given
the overwhelming experience of defeat,
disaster, and set-back that the international labour movement and the
revolutionary tradition have endured over the last 150 years, these correlations
are quite striking (even if they aren't the least bit surprising) --
for all that no one seems to have noticed them before!9

Among Maoists, Stalinists and Trotskyists (OTs and
NOTs
alike) this tactic has often assumed a thoroughly dishonest form, one that has
frequently sought to re-classify defeats as hidden victories (involving a
novel use of the IO-dodge, and a quasi-religious use of the NON-ploy; examples
of both of these will be given below). Clearly, this has allowed factors
other than the subjective and/or theoretical failings of the parties involved to be blamed for any of the setbacks
our side has faced.

As should seem obvious, a movement can't learn from its
mistakes if it 'never' makes any (or never admits to making any)! Indeed, it looks like DM-theorists are the only life-form
in the known universe that
not only does not, but can't learn from recalcitrant reality. As we will see, the
NON and the belief that appearances 'contradict' underlying "essences" stands in
the way of most dialecticians emulating the rest of sentient life on the planet: learning from
past mistakes.9a

Despite frequent claims to the contrary, the
aforementioned dialectical-dodges and -ploys have meant that significant parts of our movement have
engaged in the deliberate rotation of material reality so that
their (in)version of Hegelian Idealism can remain on its feet. Instead of
flipping Hegel, material reality has been up-ended in order to conform to
a set of doctrinaire ideas
held about it.

Hard-headed Marxists have thus spun reality
through 180 degrees,
stuck their own theoretical feet in the air, inserted their collective head in the sand,
and have -- despite the fact that virtually every aspect of
revolutionary practice has failed for much of the last hundred years, and in the face of the grim
realisation that the
vast majority of workers ignore MD
-- proclaimed thatDialectical Marxism has been tested
successfully in practice and now represents the objective "world view" of the
proletariat!10

Marx
once claimed that Philosophy
stands in relation to the sciences as masturbation does to sexual love. Clearly,
overindulgence in Dialectical Masturbation has not just made revolutionaries
short-sighted, it has rendered them theoretically blind.

Theoretical
Onanism like
this has unsurprisingly encouraged a headlong retreat into fantasy (of the
type noted
above, and worse). Such flights-of-fancy have been amply reinforced by the
profound
narcolepsy induced
in comrades by the constant repetition of the same tired old formulae, obscure
jargon, and hackneyed phrases.
A simple but effective Dialectical Mantra, internalised and regurgitated by all
serious adepts (containing hardy perennials such as the dogma that Capitalism is
riddled with 'contradictions', even though not one of those who intone this
shibboleth
seems able to say why these are indeed contradictions -- on that, see
here, and
here (in the comments section at the bottom)) has helped insulate militant
minds from material reality for far too long. In such
a tradition-dominated
and Ideally-constructed world, annoying facts are simply ignored -- or flipped
upside down.

Anyone who doubts this should try the
following experiment: chose any randomly-selected,
dialectically-distracted comrade and attempt to persuade her/him to acknowledge the long-term failure of
his/her own brand of Marxism (that is, if it has been around long enough!). Unless you are extremely
unlucky, you will soon
discover how deep this particular head has been inserted into the nearest sand dune.

[On the
excuses usually given for the failure of Dialectical Marxism (that is, where
failure is
even so much as acknowledged!), see Essay Ten
Part One.]

To that end, stock phrases will be dusted-off and given another airing, almost as if they're
still in mint
condition. Even a cursory glance at the debates that have taken place over the
last five revolutionary generations or so will reveal the sad spectacle of theorists
mouthing dialectical slogans at one another as if the ones on the receiving end
hadn't heard them a thousand times already, and the ones chanting them hadn't intoned them just
as often.11

Alongside this there has emerged a correspondingly
robust refusal to face up to reality. In my experience, this ostrich-like characteristic is
found most glaringly among OTs
(perhaps because Trotskyism is by far and away the most unsuccessful and
fragmentary wing of Marxism), but it is
also represented to varying degrees
throughout the rest of the revolutionary/communist movement (with
MISTs probably winning
a Silver Medal in this event).12

[MIST = Maoist
Dialectician.]

As already noted, a good example of this is
the knee-jerk quotation of the phrase "tested in practice" in support of the
supposed (but imaginary) universal validity of MD.
Even though
realitytells a different story, we regularly encounter the following sort of 'whistling in
the dark' type of argument:

"There is no final, faultless, criterion for
truth which hovers, like god, outside the historical process. Neither is there
any privileged scientific method which is not shaped by the contours of the
society of which it is a part. All that exists are some theories which are less
internally contradictory and have a greater explanatory power…. [I]f the truth
is the totality, then it is the totality of working class experience,
internationally and historically which gives access to the truth…. [A theory's]
validity must be proven by its superior explanatory power -- [which means it
is] more internally coherent, more widely applicable, capable of greater
empirical verification -- in comparison with its competitors. Indeed, this is a
condition of it entering the chain of historical forces as an effective power.
It is a condition of it being 'proved in practice.' If it is not superior to
other theories in this sense, it will not 'seize the masses,' will not become a
material force, will not be realized in practice." [Rees (1998), pp.235-37.]

However, the fact that Dialectical
Marxism (never
mind Dialectical Trotskyism) has never actually "seized the masses"
-- except perhaps briefly in Germany, Italy and France, it has never
even got close to lightly hugging them (not even in Russia, in 1917!) --
that fact isn't allowed to spoil the
parade or interrupt the daydream. So, this inconvenient aspect of reality is simply
inverted and the opposite idea is left standing on its feet (or it is
simply ignored).

Failing that, of course, the happy day when
MD finally manages to captivate the
masses is projected way off into the future where it becomes a safe 'fact', insulated from easy refutation.

Of course, beyond blaming the mass of the
population for their own failure to appreciate this wondrous theory (a
rhetorical tactic beloved, for example, of Maoists), few
DM-fans have ever paused to wonder why the
overwhelming majority
of workers/human beings stubbornly remain locked in 'un-seized' mode, so deep in the sand is this collective,
Hegelianised brain now wedged.

Since MD is regarded as the very
epitome of scientific knowledge (a very "Algebra of Revolution", if you will),
the fault can't lie with the theory, so it must be located elsewhere. The
'solution' is no less difficult to find: the masses are to blame! They are gripped by "false
consciousness", trapped in a world dominated by inadequate
"formal thinking". "Static" language and "fixed categories" dominate their
lives, this sorry state of affairs compounded by the "banalities of commonsense". Indeed, they have been
seduced by "commodity fetishism", or have been bought off by
imperialist "super-profits".

Material reality is once more inverted so
that a comforting idea is allowed to remain on its feet. A vanishingly small
fraction of humanity has seen the light, the vast majority of working people are
lost in outer darkness
--, this peremptory judgement itself
justified by a theory that not one of its acolytes can actually explain!

Such is deleterious effect on
Dialectical Marxists
of a diet rich in
Silicates.

Naturally, this means that dialectics must be brought
to the masses "from the outside", whether they like it or not.

[Up to present, however, the
signs are that this
has been a
consistent "not".]

But, the conclusion is never drawn (it doesn't
even make the
bottom of the reserve list) that workers will never accept a theory that clashes with their materially-grounded
language, and which runs counter to their understanding and experience -- or
which, because of this,isn't even a materialist theory!

It could be countered that in a
revolutionary situation, daily experience and commonsense aren't sure and safe guides to
action. Hence, a revolutionary party needs a theory, one that transcends the
immediate, and which has been tested in practice.

And yet, HM provides us with just such a
theory. Even better: its concepts clash neither with the vernacular nor
with common understanding. Quite the contrary, as we saw in
Part One of this Essay, HM
actually depends on both!

On the other hand, with respect to concepts
drawn from DM, the
proffered rejoinder
in the last but one paragraph is as misguided as it can be. As Part One of this
Essay has also shown, not one single thesis drawn from DM relates to anything a human
being, let alone a worker, or even a Marxist, could experience. In that case,
it can't
be an expression of the party's practice; nor can it be, or have been tested in
practice (as we will see). Moreover, as Essays Twelve
Part One, and subsequent Parts
of Essay Twelve (summary here) and
Fourteen Part One (summary
here) show, DM is based on concepts
derived from centuries of boss-class thought.

Small wonder then that DM fails to mesh with
material reality, and hence that it can be used to help change it.

Nor, it seems, has anyone even considered the
effect that DM has had on the standing of revolutionaries in the eyes of
ordinary workers, or on their respect for Marxism -- whose parties are
now widely regarded as little more than a standing joke, comprised of nothing but
warring sects
dominated by obscure and irrelevant ideas.

Video One: The First
Anti-Dialectical Joke in History?

Still less thought has gone into the extent to which
this 'theory'
(with its egregious logic)
has undermined HM as a science, just as precious little attention has been paid to the
fatally-compromised
credibility of anyone who accepts DM.

Well, would you listen to and respect
the opinions of anyone who accepts the
political equivalent of
flat-earth theory, or the ideas of assorted
New Age Gurus?

However, as noted in the
Introduction,
revolutionaries are unlikely to abandon DM in spite of the noxious effect
it has had on their thought or on their movement --, or in the face of the steady blows that yours truly rains down upon it.

Whether or not DM spells the Death of Marxism
is obviously of no concern to those held in its thrall, which is why many of
those who have made it this far will reject much of what this Essay says, and will
read no further.

This is hardly
surprising: it is
difficult to see clearly with your head stuck in the metaphorical equivalent of
the
Gobi Desert.

It has been maintained here that
DM appeals to and
hence satisfies the
contingent psychological needs of certain sections of the revolutionary movement, comrades who, because of their class
origin/position and socialisation, and because of the constant failure of Dialectical Marxism, cling to DM in
a way that makes
a drowning man look positively indifferent toward any straws that might
randomly drift his way.

[Any who doubt this should try arguing with
comrades who are in thrall to this theory. (On that, see
here.)]

As noted earlier, this is because dialectics
offers consolation analogously to the comfort and reassurance that religious dogma supplies
believers; that is, while DM provides its acolytes with solace in the face of
unrealised hopes and dashed expectations,
it also supplies them with
a psychological defence mechanism against
disillusion -- by re-configuring each defeat as
its opposite.

In relation to the recent crisis in
the UK-SWP, this is what
Mark Steel had to say:

"SWP members who have taken a stand on the current issue seem bewildered as to
why their leaders behave in this illogical way. But the reason may be that the
debate isn't really about the allegations, or attitudes towards feminism, it's
about accepting that you do as you're told, that the party is under attack at
all times so you defend the leaders no matter what, that if the party's
pronouncement doesn't match reality, it must be reality that's wrong. Dissent on
an issue and your crime is not to be wrong about the issue, it's that you
dissented at all." [Quoted from
here.]

As we will see,
DM plays a key role in this respect, since it
teaches that reality ought to contradict the way things appear
to be.

This is worryingly similar to the way that theists manage to persuade themselves that
despite appearances to the contrary, death, disease and suffering are not
only beneficial, they confirm the goodness of 'God'! Both clearly supply
believers with a
convenient excuse for
refusing to face the facts.13

In other words, DM is the
"opiate" of the
Party, the heart of a seemingly hopeless cause.13a00

For those Dialectical Marxists who live in a world that
is divorced from the day-to-day life and struggles of ordinary workers -- i.e.,
for professional revolutionaries who aren't involved in the material world of toil --, HM clearly isn't fundamental enough.
In fact, such individuals -- who, for whatever reason, are cut-off from the world of
collective labour --
clearly require their own
distinctive world-view, one that has itself been abstracted (cut-off) from
the world of 'appearances', and thus from material reality itself.

This 'world-view' must be a theory that adequately represents the (now) alienated experience of these erstwhile 'radicals'; it
must not only be divorced from ordinary language and common experience, it must
be distinguished from working class experience and hence from
genuinely
materialist forms-of-thought. In addition, it must help rationalise,
justify and confirm the pre-eminent organisational and theoretical position
DM-theorists have arrogated
to themselves -- that is,
it must ratify their status as leaders of the class.

To
that end, it must be a theory that only they "understand".

Even then, they must be able to use this theory to 'prove'
that the membership of other Marxist groups either (i) Do not "understand"
dialectics or that (ii) They misuse and/or distort it. [On that,
see below.]

What better theory then to fit the bill
than one based on an incomprehensible set of ideas Hegel concocted in the
comfort of his own head (upside down or 'the right
way up')?

DM is thus beyond workers' experience
(indeed, anyone's experience) -- not by accident --, but because it was meant to be that way.13a0

Naturally, this not only renders DM immune from
refutation, it also transforms it into an ideal intellectual tool for
getting things the wrong way round (or, indeed, upside down). It is thus an ideal
device for keeping 'reality' Ideal.
All the while, this 'theory' helps
insulate militant
minds from the setbacks revolutionaries constantly face -- just as it inures
them to the dire consequences of this theory itself.

DM is thus not just the opiate of the party,
it expresses thesoul of the professional revolutionary.
Abstracted not just from the class, but also from humanity itself, this faction
within the labour movement naturally finds abstraction conducive to
the way it
sees the natural and social world, and to the way it views the working class: as
an abstract object of theory, not the real subject of history.

That also explains, at least, the motivation
underlying the belief that DM is the
"world-view" of the proletariat -- plainly these proletarians aren't
real workers. They are
members of an abstract class of proletarians (most of whom,
in the concrete world, have never
heard of this theory, and never will)!13a01

Of course, this also accounts for DM's long-term
lack of impact on workers themselves.

The above mind-set is connected with the
way that such individuals find their way into the revolutionary movement.13a1

Unlike
most worker-revolutionaries, professional revolutionaries have joined, or have been recruited
into the socialist movement
(by-and-large) as a result either of (1) Their own
personal commitment to the revolution, (2) Their rebellious personality,
(3) Their individual alienation from the system, or
because of (4) Other contingent psychological/social reasons --,
but, significantly, not as a direct result of, or involvement in, the class war.

That is, they become
revolutionaries through their own efforts, or those of some other
individual (such as a parent, partner, sibling, friend, teacher, author), and not (in general) through
participation in collective action, or in strikes (etc.) at their own
place of work -- if they work.

This means
that from the beginning(again, by-and-large),because of their
class position and non-working class upbringing, such comrades act
and think like individuals. This (a) Affects the ideas they form, (b)
Colours their attitude toward such ideas, (c) Skews
their activity inside the movement/party, and (d) Slants the relationships they form
both with other
revolutionaries and with workers themselves.

Indeed, no less an authority than Lenin
quoted
Kautsky to this effect:

"Theproblem...that again interests us so keenly today is the
antagonism between the intelligentsiaand the proletariat. My
colleagues (Kautsky is himself an intellectual, a writer and editor) will
mostly be indignant that I admit this antagonism. But it actually exists, and,
as in other cases, it would be the most inexpedient tactics to try to overcome
the fact by denying it. This antagonism is a social one, it relates to
classes, not to individuals. The individual intellectual, like the
individual capitalist, may identify himself with the proletariat in its class
struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not this type
of intellectual, who is still an exception among his class, that we shall
mainly speak of in what follows. Unless otherwise stated, I shall use the
word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual who takes the
stand of bourgeois society, and who is characteristic of the
intelligentsia as a class. This class stands in a certain
antagonism to the proletariat.

"Thisantagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and
capital. The intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life
is bourgeois, and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at
the same time he is compelled to sell the product of his labour, and often his
labour-power, and is himself often enough exploited and humiliated by the
capitalist. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism
to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are
not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and
ideas.

"...Quitedifferent is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means
of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his
personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at
all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his
individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity.
It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a
whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the
need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course
he counts himself among the latter...." [Kautsky, quoted in Lenin (1947),
pp.121-23. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]

To be sure, Lenin and Kautsky were describing hostile
(non-Marxist) intellectuals, but much of what he said applies to those who become
professional revolutionaries, too. Indeed, his class
analysis applies to Lenin himself, and to other petty-bourgeois Dialectical Marxists. [More on this
later.]

While it is true that there are significant
differences between Marxist intellectuals/professional revolutionaries and
non-Marxist intellectuals, because they both come from (or now belong to) the
same class, there are far more similarities -- especially since both of
these class fractions have had ruling-class ideas fed to them almost from day
one.

Such comrades thus enter
the movement committed to the revolution as an
Idea, as an expression of their own personal/intellectual integrity, their anger directed against the system,
their idiosyncratic alienation from class society, or their individual
life-goals.
They aren't revolutionaries for
proletarian/materialist reasons --, that is, as a result of their
direct experience of collective action, or as a direct consequence of
workers' response
to exploitation --, but for individualistic, albeit often very noble, reasons.

This isn't to malign such individuals, but to remind
us that this is a class issue.

So, when
these
comrades encounter DM,
it is
quite 'natural' for them to latch on to its a priori
theses. That is because,
as Lenin noted above, their class position has already
delivered them up as atomised, isolated
individuals with no collective identity.
This non-negotiable fact is
further compounded by the additional fact that these individuals have had their
heads filled with "ruling ideas" almost since the day they left the cradle -- which
indoctrination was itself a
direct result of their 'superior'
education and the bourgeois/petty-bourgeois socialisation they received:

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch
the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society,
is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means
of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the
means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of
those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling
ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material
relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of
the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas
of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other
things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a
class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that
they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers,
as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas
of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.'" [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from here. Bold
emphases added.]

Notice how Marx
pointed out that:

"The class which has the means
of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the
means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of
those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.... Insofar,
therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an
epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence
among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate
the production and distribution of the ideas of their age...."
[Ibid. Bold emphases added.]

They rule also as
"thinkers", and they do so in "its whole range".

In which case, the individuals
who were later to become leading revolutionaries (but who had been "subject to"
the full force of this indoctrination
before they became Marxists), can't fail to have had their thinking shaped by the ideas
and thought-forms of the
ruling-class.

Which is, of course, why Lenin thought it quite natural to look to
the work of previous thinkers as precursors of the concepts we find in DM:

"The history of philosophy and the history of
social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling
'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified
doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the
development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists
precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the
foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate
continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of
philosophy, political economy and socialism.

"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive
and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable
with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It
is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth
century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and
French socialism." [Lenin,
Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone
added.]

Notice, DM is "a continuation of the
teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy". A "continuation",
not a break from!

As we will see
in Essay Twelve Part One, and the
rest of Essay Twelve (summary
here), there is a
clear thread running through the many and varied world-views that have been
encouraged and/or patronised by the various ruling-classes history has inflicted
upon humanity: the idea that there is a hidden world underlying 'appearances', accessible to thought alone, the nature of which
can be derived from the meaning of a handful of words/concepts, and nothing more. Because
of this, Traditional
Philosophers were quite happy to impose their theories on the world in a
dogmatic and a priori manner
-- plainly because these theories relate, not to the material word, but to this
invisible world, a world that issupposedly more real than the
world we see around us. Even though the content of these theories has altered with
each change in the mode of production, their form has remained remarkably
consistent for two-and-a-half millennia: philosophical theses, valid
for all of space and time, can be derived from words/thought alone, and
can thus be imposed on nature dogmatically.

In which case,
these individuals -- who had been educated to see the world precisely this way before
they'd even heard of Marxism --, when they encountered Hegel and DM,
appropriated these dogmatic theses with ease.
That is because they looked for 'logical' principles in this hidden world that
guaranteed change was part of the underlying fabric of reality. The thought-forms encapsulated
by this theory appeared to them to be at once both
philosophical and self-certifying (i.e., they were true
a priori). Moreover,
because DM-theses were part of what seemed to be a
radical philosophical and political tradition,
they also appeared to be revolutionary ideas.

Manifestly,
dialectical concepts could only have arisen from Traditional Theory (workers
aren't accustomed to dreaming them up),
which ideological source had already been tainted by centuries of boss-class dogma --
indeed, as Marx
himself pointed out, and as Lenin unwittingly acknowledged.

That is because (1)
Traditional Philosophy was the only source of
developed 'High Theory' available at the time, and (2) These
erstwhile radicals were predisposed to search for a world-view of their own --
because, as they repeatedly tell us: "everyone has to have a philosophy"! -- and
this particular world-view suited them down to the ground, since it encapsulated thought-forms to which they were
already susceptible. The
class background, socialisation and education to which such individuals were,
and still are, subject under Capitalism means that
ruling-class
ideas had already been installed in their brains long before they became
revolutionaries. So, a priori knowledge (courtesy of Hegel --
upside down, or 'the right way up') appealed to them from the get-go. This new batch of Dialectical/Hermetic ideas hardly raised an
eyebrow -- again, as we can see was the case with Lenin, for example.

Initially, very little specialist knowledge
is needed to 'comprehend' DM; no expensive equipment or time-consuming experiments are required. And yet, within
hours this superscientific
'world-view' can be 'appropriated' by most eager novices (since it relies on thought alone,
and thus appears to be 'self-evident'). Literally, in half an afternoon, or
less, an
initiate can internalise a handful of theses that purport to explain
all of reality, for
all of time.

Just try learning Quantum (or even Newtonian) Mechanics that
quickly!

One only has to peruse most (Marxist) revolutionary
websites, for
example, to see how they claim to be able to reveal nature's deepest secrets
(valid for all of space and time) in a page or two of
homespun 'logic', loosely defined phraseology, and Mickey Mouse Science --, for
instance,
here,
and
here.

Contrast that with the many months, or
even
years of hard work and study it takes to grasp the genuine science of Marxist economics,
for example. Contrast it, too, with the detailed knowledge required in order
to
understand, say, the class structure and development of the Ancient World, or
even Medieval
Society. No 'self-evident', a priori truths there!

Moreover, because this 'theory' is connected
with wider historic, or even romantic aims (explored briefly below),
dialectically-distracted
comrades soon become wedded (nay, superglued) to this doctrine. They
become converts who act, talk and behave as if they have received a revelation
from on high.

"He was an orthodox Marxist
from his conversion to its doctrines in 1898 to his death in 1940." [Novack (1978),
pp.271-72.]

Novack's use of
quasi-religious language is, in the event, quite revealing.

The
subjective and emotive response
by such individuals when they encounter these easily accessible 'doors of perception',
as it were, now connects
MD with the
revolutionary ego, for it is this theory which guarantees that the anger
they feel at the injustices of Capitalism, allied with their own alienation from
it, and all the hard work they have devoted to The Cause, won't be in vain.

On the
contrary, this theory ensures that the life of each initiate assumes cosmic significance. Dialectics places the militant mind at
the very centre of the philosophical universe -- for it gives to each of these social
atoms a unifying purpose, with a set of eternal 'truths'/'laws' that
underwrite and confirm their exclusivity, linking their actions directly
with the further development of reality itself. Only they understand
'the dialectic' of nature -- the very Algebra of the Revolution -- only they
have their fingers on the 'pulse
of freedom',only they know how to further its development.

The heady romance
of being a revolutionaryand an active participant in the cosmic drift of the entire
universe now takes over. As
Alan Wald (veteran US Marxist and editor of Against the
Current) noted (in connection with the
US-SWP):

"To join the SWP was to
become a person with a mission, to become part of a special group of men and
women who, against all odds, wanted to change society for the better; one
felt a bit more in control of the universe." [Quoted from
here; bold emphasis added.]

Much the same can be said about those joining other far-left groups.
Indeed, even rank-and-file revolutionaries are affected in this way. Speaking of
his time in the Militant Tendency, this is what Andy Troke had to say:

"It's
like somebody who has been through a religious period. You look to either
Trotsky, Marx, Lenin, Engels or Ted Grant or Peter Taaffe and you have got the
rationale for why people are reacting this way or that. And obviously, everyone
else is illogical, because you have the right view. I believe there was a great
deal of this type of thinking: we were the chosen few. We had the right
ideology. People like Tribune, who were at that time Militant's main
opponents didn't know where they were going.... We were the right ones." [Quoted
in Tourish and Wohlforth (2000), p.181. Bold emphases added.]

To be honest, I must admit to similar thoughts and feelings myself when I joined
the UK-SWP in 1987, pinned a red, clenched fist badge to my lapel, and started
selling the paper. I am sure I wasn't the only one who reacted this way. In
fact, I can recall a period in 1988 when a major discussion took place in the
UK-SWP after a talk given by Lindsey German. In that talk, she advanced the
claim that there were, in her, "no
traces of bourgeois ideology". For some time after it became a hot topic whether
or not revolutionaries were free from all such 'indecent thoughts'. One could
almost hear the phrase "Born again!"

For all the world, these comrades
seem to fall in love with this 'theory'! That itself is evident from the irrational,
emotional, often extremely abusive if not violently aggressive way they respond when it is attacked. [On that, see below, and
here.]

[The
vitriol, hostility, lies and smears I have had to face now for many years suggests I'd
not last long if DM-fans were ever to gain power! Indeed, one
prominent Marxist Professor of Economics,
Andrew Kliman, in an e-mail
exchange, expressed the fervent hope I should "Eat sh*t and die!" (either that
or quaff some
Hemlock) because I had
the temerity to question the sacred dialectic. This comradely wish was repeated
here (in the
comments section) in October 2013, but was deleted by the moderators soon after because of the violent and intemperate nature of the language the good
Professor thought to use! Another SWP comrade (implicitly)
accused
me of being worse than the Nazis, and for the same reason! Incidentally,
this comrade has now left the UK-SWP.]

The revolutionary ego can only ascend to
the next 'level' if it becomes
a willing
vehicle for the tide of history, a slave to the dialectic. The dialectic now
expresses in its earthly incarnation
cosmic forces that have governed material reality from the beginning of time,
and will continue doing so until the end of time. Its theses are woven into the very fabric
of the universe -- just like the 'Word of God'.

By becoming a
devoted channel for the
mysterious 'mediations' that
emanate
forth from the "Totality" (which, like 'God',
can't be defined, and which
works in no less a mysterious way), through
revolutionary 'good works' ("activity") and pure thoughts ("non-Revisionism"/devotion
to "the tradition"),
by joining a movement that
can't fail to alter fundamentally the course of human history, the petty-bourgeois ego is 'born
again' to a higher purpose and with a cosmically-ordained mandate.

The
dialectical novitiate thus emerges
as a professional revolutionary --,
sometimes even with a
brand new name to prove it. But, certainly with a new persona.

(1) They as individuals
can become key figures in the further development of history -- actually helping determine the
direction social evolution will take.

(2) Their
personal existence is, after all, not meaningless or for nought.

(3) Whatever
caused their personal alienation from class society can be rectified, reversed
and/or redeemed
(in whole or in part) through the
right sort of acts, thoughts and deeds -- reminiscent of the way that
Pelagian
forms of 'muscular Christianity'
taught that salvation might be had through pure thoughts, good works, and the severe
treatment of the body.

Dialectics now
occupies a role analogous to that which religious belief has always assumed in the minds of the
credulous, giving cosmic significance and consolation to these, its very own
petty-bourgeois victims. Same cause,
similar palliative drug.

However,because (by-and-large) they haven't been recruited from the working class, these social atoms need an internally-generated unifying force --
a theory that supplies a set of self-certifying ideas -- to bind them to the Party
and the Cause. As such, they need a Cosmic Whole allied to a
Holistic Theory to make sense of their social fragmentation. This is where the mysterious
"Totality" (with its 'universal inter-connections' -- analogous to the
Omnipresence of 'God') comes into its own. But, just like 'God', so mysterious is
this "Totality" that not one of its slaves can tell you of its
nature, even though they all
gladly bend
the knee to its Contradictory
Will.

In
stark contrast, workers involved in collective labour have unity forced on them by
well-known, external, material forces. These compel workers to combine;
they do not persuade them to bond together as a result of some theory or
other. Workers are thus forced to associate, with unity
externally-imposed upon them. This is a material,
not an Ideal force.13a

In contrast,
once more, while the class war forces workers to unite, it
drives
these
petty-bourgeois individuals, these professional revolutionaries, apart,
and thus into ever smaller, continually fragmenting sects.

In that case, a holistic, dialectical theory replaces
collective struggle as the sole unifying principle; petty-bourgeois/de-classé
Marxists are thus 'united' by a set of universal and dogmatic theses.

As Lenin
himself noted:

"For the factory, which
seems only a bogey to some, represents that highest form of capitalist
co-operation which has united and disciplined the proletariat, taught it to
organise, and placed it at the head of all the other sections of the toiling and
exploited population. And Marxism, the ideology of the proletariat trained
by capitalism, has been and is teaching unstable intellectuals to distinguish
between the factory as a means of exploitation (discipline based on fear of
starvation) and the factory as a means of organisation (discipline
based on collective work united by the conditions of a technically highly
developed form of production). The discipline and organisation which come so
hard to the bourgeois intellectual are very easily acquired by the proletariat
just because of this factory 'schooling'. Mortal fear of this school and utter
failure to understand its importance as an organising factor are characteristic
of the ways of thinking which reflect the petty-bourgeois mode of life and
which give rise to the species of anarchism that the German Social-Democrats
call Edelanarchismus, that is, the anarchism of the 'noble' gentleman,
or aristocratic anarchism, as I would call it. This aristocratic anarchism is
particularly characteristic of the Russian nihilist. He thinks of the Party
organisation as a monstrous 'factory'; he regards the subordination of the part
to the whole and of the minority to the majority as 'serfdom' (see Axelrod's
articles); division of labour under the direction of a centre evokes from him a
tragi-comical outcry against transforming people into 'cogs and wheels' (to turn
editors into contributors being considered a particularly atrocious species of
such transformation); mention of the organisational Rules of the Party calls
forth a contemptuous grimace and the disdainful remark (intended for the
'formalists') that one could very well dispense with Rules altogether." [Lenin
(1947), pp.248-49. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site. Bold emphases and links added.]

The forces that operate on
DM-fans are thus quintessentially individualistic, manifestly Ideal, and
notoriously
centrifugal (as, indeed, Lenin noted above, and earlier,
and as we will soon see below) -- indeed, as one participant
admitted
(in the recent debate over
the crisis that engulfed the UK-SWP in January 2013):

"I don't know if you have
permanent factions within ISO -- my experience of the movement is that they are
a disaster. I assume you have a constitution, rules for members to abide by and
a disciplinary procedure to deal with those who deliberately flout them. So do
we, and surely you respect our right to act accordingly." [Jeffrey Hurford,
quoted from
here;
accessed 07/02/2013.]

The party thus needs a set of anti-democratic and bureaucratic rules to ensure
its internal cohesion and integrity.

Without this 'theory', the
rationale underlying the romantic revolutionary idea -- which implies
such comrades are situated right at
the centre of the dialectical universe
-- would
lose all its force.

Moreover, because
dialectics provides such comrades with an apparently coherent, but
paradigmaticallytraditional picture of
reality (i.e., DM is an a priori
theory, dogmatically imposed on nature, and derived from thought alone), it
supplies each
of its acolytes with a unique
set of motivating factors. Indeed, because this theory is represented individualistically
inside each dialectical skull (which fact convinces one and all that they alone
truly
'understand' this
esoteric theory), it helps divide each 'dialectical disciple', one from
the next -- for reasons explored in the next sub-section.

Dialectics,
the theory of universal opposites, goes to work on militant minds and helps
turn each one into a serial sectarian and fanatical faction fiend.

Collective
discipline is paramount inside
Bolshevik-style parties. But, the strong-willed, petty-bourgeois militant this
style of politics attracts isn't used
to this form of externally-imposed regimentation (since, as
Lenin noted, these comrades are
attracted by internally-processed, self-certifying ideas). Hence, fights
soon break out, often over
what seem minor, even personal issues.14

Ever since childhood, these comrades have been socialised think like social atoms, but in a
revolutionary party
they have to act like social molecules (which is a psychological trick
that lies way above their 'pay grade' -- i.e., beyond the capacities created
and/or motivated by their class origin or their
current class
position). Because of this, as noted above, personal disputes quickly
break out and are soon
re-configured as
political differences. Once again, these are primarily disputes over ideas
--,
which require, and are soon given, a theoretical 'justification'.

Unfortunately,
these
individuals are socially-conditioned egocentrics who, in their own eyes enjoy
direct access to the
dialectical motherlode (a hot wire installed, once more, in each brain by those self-certifying
Hegelian concepts -- upside down or 'the right way up') -- and they can't help exploiting that fact.
That is because
this 'dynamic', contradictory world-view defines them as
revolutionaries.

In such an
Ideal
environment, the
DM-classics
-- just like the Bible and other assorted Holy Books -- soon come
into their own.15

Again,
as Lenin pointed out, ruling-class theorists
and 'intellectuals' have always endeavoured to make a
name for themselves by developing 'their own ideas', carving out a corner, or niche,
in the market of ideas, which they can only do by criticising the ideas of every
other rival theorist. That is, after all, part of being able to establish a reputation for themselves, which is an essential component in
furthering their individual careers -- or, indeed, for defending/promoting a patron or some other
beneficent section of the ruling-class. [This was particularly true in earlier
centuries.]

Just as petty-bourgeois capitalists have to
rely on their individual knowledge, efforts and skills in order to survive in the face both of Big Capital
and the working class,
so these unfortunate dialecticians have to ply their trade in the
revolutionary movement as individual
theorists, armed only with a set of dogmatic ideas and an entire
Thesaurus
crammed full of obscure jargon and arcane terminology. Hence, these unfortunate
comrades find they have to ply their trade
in hostile waters, too.

[Anyone who doubts this only has to read the
writings of these characters to see how little respect they have for the work of
the vast majority of other revolutionary theorists (sometimes whose opinions
differ from their own only in the minutest of theological detail); their work always seems to be
a "rant", a "re-hash", a "screed"; it is invariably "boring", "turgid",
even "hysterical"; the one writing it has "bloviated"
all over the page. In addition, we find a surfeit of
scatological epithets.
(Monty Python
lampooned this mind-set only too well:"The only people we hate more
than the Romans are the f*cking Judean People's Front.") I am not suggesting that every last one of
them does this cynically. Many have very noble intentions -- but, and once again,
this is a class issue.]

So it is that these 'social atoms' have brought with them
into the Workers' Movement this divisive, bourgeois trait. And, by all
accounts, they have perfected it with all the verve of
inveterate religious sectarians.

In the market for 'Marxist' ideas, those
with the most sharply-honed critical skills soon claw their way to the top.

"Things get interesting when
you go a little deeper. If the correct, imputed class-consciousness resides in
the revolutionary party, and yet the members of the revolutionary party are in
fact pulled in different directions by their day-to-day experience, where
in the revolutionary party does it actually reside? Well, of course, if the
members at the 'periphery' of the party -- where it makes contact with the world
outside, so to say -- are being pulled by the class, then the correct
consciousness must lie at the point furthest away from this periphery -- it must
reside at the 'centre' of the party. That is why all the groups have their
'centre', and 'centralised' leaderships.

"However, in reality the
central committees are also torn apart by ideological differences; by outside
allegiances, prejudices, whims -- whatever it is that drives these people.
Therefore, ultimately possession of the correct consciousness comes down very,
very often to one person (though a member of the SWP central committee once
confided to me that, in her opinion, only two people in the SWP had the correct
revolutionary 'instincts' -- herself and Tony Cliff). The way that Gerry Healy
dominated the WRP, the way that Cliff dominated the SWP, and so on, is perhaps
not merely down to their talents or the force of their personalities, but has
been prepared by the logic of a particular mindset. So, while there is no
Führerprinzip involved, in practice these groups are nevertheless generally
dominated by powerful individuals, or powerful cliques." [Quoted from
here; italic emphasis in the original. Accessed 04/02/2013.]

Except, Wilson seems not to have applied any
sort of class analysis to this phenomenon, nor does he even so much as
mention the theory that lies at the heart of all this.

And, that isn't surprising since he is a
dialectician, too.

The fact that such individuals have very
strong characters (otherwise they'd not survive long at the top in a revolutionary party,
let alone climb the greasy pole) merely compounds the problem. As noted
above, in order
to make a name for themselves, and advance their 'revolutionary career', it becomes
important, if not necessary, for them to disagree with every other theorist, which they then almost
invariably proceed to do.

In fact, the expectation is that every single
comrade should argue his/her corner, and do so with vigour and
conviction. [And, in some parties, with
no little
added violence.]

Sectarianism is
thus caused by
petty-bourgeois 'social atoms' such as these.

Dialectics merely makes a bad situation
worse.

But, how is it able to do this?

The answer isn't hard to find: what better
theory could there be (other than
Zen Buddhism, perhaps) --, which is capable of
initiating and exacerbating endless
disputation -- than one that is as contradictory and incomprehensible as
DM/MD? What
other theory informs all who fall under its hypnotic spell that
progress (even in ideas) may only be had through "internal contradiction",
and thus through splitting? [Or, as a Maoist might say, "One
divides into two".]

Indeed, as Lenin himself pointed out:

"The
splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts...is
the essence (one of the 'essentials,' one of the
principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics....

"The struggle of mutually
exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute...."
[Lenin (1961),
pp.357-58. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at
this site.]

"Struggle" is an "absolute"; this must involve the relations between comrades, too.
An emphasis on intra-party strife and splitting thus sits right at the heart of
this theory!

We needn't wait for the ruling-class to
divide us, we are experts already!

More importantly,
as we will see, DM is almost unique
in its capacity to 'justify' anything at all and its opposite,
both of these alternatives often promoted and rationalised by the very same individual, in the
same book, article or even speech! Hence, this theory is uniquely
well-placed to rationalise any point of view and its opposite.

DM is thus the theoretical equivalent
of throwing petrol onto a raging fire.

For
Dialectical Marxists, the drive to impose one's views on others thus becomes
irresistible. Doctrinal control (i.e., the control of all those inner,
privatised ideas lodged in every
other atomised party skull, which threaten the legitimacy of the ideas of
still other dialecticians similarly so beleaguered) now acts as a surrogate for external
control by material forces.

Indeed, this
desire to control the thoughts of all those other 'atoms' in the Party has even been
given the grandiloquent name: "democratic centralism" -- a nice
'contradiction-in-terms' for you to
ponder.16

Don't get me wrong; I am here referring to the
Zinoviev-Stalin aberration, not democratic decisions openly agreed upon and collectively
implemented, whatever we decide to call it.

"The Bolshevik leadership of 1917 was elected individually.
There was no ban on factions. On the eve of the October Revolution,
Zinoviev
and Kamenev
publicly opposed the insurrection in
Maxim Gorky's newspaper...and resigned from
the Bolshevik Central Committee. They were not expelled from the Party.

"The model operated currently by the SWP is not that of the
Bolshevik revolution. It is a version of the Zinovievite model adopted during
the period of 'Bolshevisation' in the mid-1920s and then honed by ever smaller
and more marginal groups." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 29/01/2013. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site. Links added. Also see
Appendix D,
and here. (The
background details can be found in Cliff (1985),
Chapter 19.) For an
alternative view, see the UK-SWP Special Pre-Conference Bulletin article 'You
Say Kamenev, I Say Bogdanov', written by 'Kevin',
pp.69-70.]

But, just
as genuine religionists soon discovered, mind-control is much easier
to
secure if
an appeal is made to impenetrably mysterious doctrines that no one understands,
but which all must accept and all must repeat constantly
(in order to dull the critical faculties).

Hence,
because the party can't reproduce the class struggle inside its four walls, and
thus force materialist unity on its cadres externally,
it can
only control political thought internally (in each head) by turning it into a
repetitive, mind-numbing mantra,
insisting on doctrinal purity, and then accusing all those who do not conform
to such Ideal standards of
heresy, or -- worse -- of not "understanding" dialectics!

In this milieu, anAuthoritarian Personality type soon emerges
to endorse, and then enforce, ideological orthodoxy
(disguised now as part of an endeavour to keep faith with "tradition", which is,
un-coincidentally, a noxious trait shared by all known religions).
"Tradition" now becomes
a
watch-word to test the doctrinal purity of party cadres -- especially those who might stray too far
from the
narrow path which
alone leads the electtoward revolutionary salvation.17

This naturally
helps inflame yet more disputes
and thus more splits.

[History has
indeed shown that the 'centrifugal forces' of fragmentation that operate between
dialectically-distracted
comrades far out-weigh their constant calls for unity. (I return to this theme
below.
See also
Appendix F.)]

All this explains why, to each
DM-acolyte, the dialectic is so
personal and so intimately their own possession, andwhy you can
sense the personal hurt they feel when it is comprehensively trashed, as it has been at
this site.

Hence, any attack on
this 'precious jewel' is an attack on the revolutionary ego itself, and will be
resisted with all the bile at its command.

And that explains, too, all the
abuse you, dear reader,
will receive if you think to
challenge the Dialectical Doctrines of a single one of these
Hermetic Head Cases.

In addition to the many recent examples listed
here, the above allegations concerning the
highly emotional and irrational responses elicited from dialecticians when
their theory is criticised find ready confirmation in the case of at least one
leading Marxist.
George Novack
records the following meeting he and Max Shachtman had with Trotsky in Mexico, in 1937:

"[O]ur discussion glided into the subject of
philosophy.... We talked about the best ways of studying dialectical materialism,
about Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and about the
theoretical backwardness of American radicalism. Trotsky brought forward the
name of Max Eastman, who in various works had polemicized against dialectics as
a worthless idealist hangover from the Hegelian heritage of Marxism.

"He became tense and agitated. 'Upon going
back to the States,' he urged, 'you comrades must at once take up the struggle
against Eastman's distortion and repudiation of dialectical materialism.
There is nothing more important than this. Pragmatism, empiricism, is [sic]
the greatest curse of American thought. You must inoculate younger comrades
against its infection.'

"I was somewhat surprised at the vehemence of
his argumentation on this matter at such a moment. As the principal
defendant in absentia in the
Moscow trials, and because of the dramatic
circumstances of his voyage in exile, Trotsky then stood in the centre of
international attention. He was fighting for his reputation, liberty, and life
against the powerful government of Stalin, bent on his defamation and death.
After having been imprisoned and gagged for months by the Norwegian authorities,
he had been kept incommunicado for weeks aboard their tanker.

"Yet on the first day after reunion with his
cothinkers, he spent more than an hour explaining how important it was for a
Marxist movement to have a correct philosophical method and to defend
dialectical materialism against its opponents!...

"[Trotsky later wrote:] 'The question of correct
philosophical doctrine, that is, a correct method of thought, is of decisive
significance to a revolutionary party....'" [Novack (1978),
pp.269-71. Bold emphases alone added. Spelling altered to conform to UK English;
quotation marks adapted in line with the conventions adopted at this site. Link
also added.]

The accuracy of Novack's memory is confirmed by the following comment of
Trotsky's:

"...It would not be amiss, therefore, to refer to
the fact that my first serious conversation with comrades
Shachtman and Warde,
in the train immediately after my arrival in Mexico in January 1937, was
devoted to the necessity of persistently propagating dialectic materialism.
After our American section split from the Socialist Party I insisted most
strongly on the earliest possible publication of a theoretical organ, having
again in mind the need to educate the party, first and foremost its new members,
in the spirit of dialectic materialism. In the United States, I wrote at
that time, where the bourgeoisie systematically in stills (sic) vulgar empiricism in
the workers, more than anywhere else is it necessary to speed the elevation of
the movement to a proper theoretical level. On January 20, 1939, I wrote to
comrade Shachtman concerning his joint article with comrade
Burnham, 'Intellectuals
in Retreat':

"'The section on the dialectic is the greatest
blow that you, personally, as the editor of the New International could
have delivered to Marxist theory.... Good. We will speak about it publicly.'

"Thus a year ago I gave open notice in advance to
Shachtman that I intended to wage a public struggle against his eclectic
tendencies. At that time there was no talk whatever of the coming opposition; in
any case furthest from my mind was the supposition that the philosophic bloc
against Marxism prepared the ground for a political bloc against the program of
the Fourth International." [Trotsky (1971),
p.142. Bold emphases
and link added.]18

Given the content of this Essay -- and
Marx's own words
--, Trotsky's semi-religious
fervour, his emotional attachment to the dialectic, and his irrational
response to Max Eastman and
James Burnham,
for example, become much easier to understand. Can you imagine anyone getting so
worked up over the minutiae underlying the demise of Feudalism? Or the falling rate of
profit?

For all their other major differences, Trotsky and Stalin were
both Devoted Dialectical Disciples.

Ethan Pollock records a revealing incident that took place in the Kremlin just
after the end of World War Two:

"In late December 1946 Joseph Stalin called a
meeting of high-level Communist Party personnel.... The opening salvos of the
Cold War had already been launched. Earlier in the year
Winston Churchill had
warned of an iron curtain dividing Europe. Disputes about the political future
of Germany, the presence of Soviet troops in Iran, and proposals to control
atomic weapons had all contributed to growing tensions between the United States
and the USSR. Inside the Soviet Union the devastating effects of the Second
World War were painfully obvious: cities remained bombed out and
unreconstructed; famine laid waste to the countryside, with millions dying of
starvation and many millions more malnourished. All this makes one of the agenda
items for the Kremlin meeting surprising: Stalin wanted to discuss the recent prizewinning book
History of Western European Philosophy[by Georgii
Aleksandrov -- RL]." [Pollock (2006), p.15. Bold emphasis and links added.
Italic emphases in the original.]

Pollock then outlines the problems Aleksandrov faced because of his interpretation of the foreign (i.e., German) roots of
DM in an earlier work, and how
he had
been criticised for not emphasising the "reactionary and bourgeois"
nature of the work of German Philosophers like
Kant,
Fichte and Hegel --, in view of
the fight against Fascism (when, of course, during the
Hitler-Stalin pact, of a few
years earlier, the opposite line had been peddled by the Kremlin). Pollock also
describes the detailed and lengthy discussions the Central Committee devoted to
Aleksandrov's previous work years earlier at the height of the war against the Nazis!

It is revealing, therefore, to note that Stalin and his henchmen
considered DM to be so important that other more pressing matters could be shelved
or delayed
so that they might devote time to discussing...Philosophy. In this, of course, Stalin was
in total agreement with Trotsky and other leading Marxists.

Once more, Marx's comments
below make
abundantly clear
why this is so.

We can see something similar happening in the case of
Nikolai Bukharin. Anyone
who reads Philosophical Arabesques [Bukharin (2005)] will be struck by the
semi-religious fervour with which he defends dialectics. In view of Bukharin's serious
predicament, this is hardly surprising. But, it is also no less revealing
since it confirms much of the above: this theory is responsible for holding the dialectical
ego together,even in the face of death.

The old saying, "There are no atheists in a foxhole", may be
incorrect, but it looks like there might not have been many non-dialecticians in the
Lubyanka
waiting on Stalin's 'mercy'. Behind those grim walls it seems that even hard-nosed
Bolsheviks needed some form of consolation. As Helena Sheehan notes in her Introduction:

"Perhaps the most remarkable thing about his text
is that it was written at all. Condemned not by an enemy but by his own
comrades, seeing what had been so magnificently created being so catastrophically destroyed, undergoing shattering interrogations, how was he not
totally debilitated by despair? Where did this author get the strength, the
composure, the faith in the futurethat was necessary to write this treatise
of Philosophy, this passionate defense of the intellectual tradition of Marxism
and the political project of socialist construction?

"Religion
is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet
won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.... Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its
logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its
moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation
and justification....

"...Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions...." [Marx (1975b),
p.244. Bold emphases added.]

The fact that this doomed comrade chose to spend his last
days and weeks
expounding and defending this Hermetic theory (albeit,
a theory that has supposedly been
given a materialist flip) --
pleading with
Stalin not to destroy this book --, tells us all we need to know.

This gets things completely the wrong way
round. As Tony Cliff remarked (in a talk), it is
lack of power that corrupts absolutely. It corrupts the working class, and that in turn
allows the members of the ruling-class to get away with whatever they feel
they can get away with, corrupting them in return.

Similarly, a passive working class allows
revolutionaries -- or, rather, their supposed 'tribunes' -- to get up to all kinds of
dialectical mischief. Hence, the latter become corrupted, too.

As we
have seen, among the many different forms this corruption can take is the general lack of any sort of
effective democratic control exercised on
both Central Committees and Party 'Leaders'.

Despite the regular calls to "build the party",
small now becomes beautiful, if not highly desirable. Plainly, that is because it allows for
maximum thought-control. In small parties the 'purity' of the
'revolutionary tradition' is easier to enforce.

Sectarianism is thus an intrinsic, constant and universal feature of the political and organisational
practice of these petty-bourgeois revolutionaries. This keeps the party
small, and helps distinguish it from all the rest.

This is what
Hal Draper
had to say about the situation in Americaalone, thirty odd years ago:

"American socialism today has hit a
new low in terms of sect fragmentation. There are more sects going through their
gyrations at this moment than have ever existed in all previous periods in this
country taken together. And the fragments are still fissioning, down to the
sub-microscopic level. Politically speaking, their average has dropped from the
comic-opera plane to the comic-book grade. Where the esoteric sects (mainly
Trotskyist splinters) of the 1930s tended toward a sort of super sophistication
in Marxism and futility in practice, there is a gaggle of grouplets now (mainly
Maoist-Castroite) characterized by amnesia regarding the Marxist tradition,
ignorance of the socialist experience, and extreme primitivism. The road to an
American socialist movement surely lies over the debris, or around the rotting
off-shoots of, this fetid jungle of sects." [Quoted from here.]

This isn't
just an American phenomenon; it is international, and, as we will see in Essay
Ten Part One, the situation has
worsened considerably since the above words were written. The on-going
fragmentation of the UK-SWP is just the latest example of this trend.

The
aforementioned Authoritarian Personality ensures that democratic accountability
is at best merely formal; genuine democratic control soon becomes an early casualty in this backwater of the class war.
Democracy is, after all, an external constraint exercised by the majority
on the individual; hence it is favoured by the majority
for these reasons; but, it is equally feared by the petty-bourgeois minority, and for the same reasons.
In
such dialectically-dominated micro-parties, democracy threatens the internally-enforced
control that the professional revolutionary minority prefer. Which is, of
course, why many such parties have latched onto the slate system as the preferred
method of electing their CCs.18a

This is, after
all, one of the reasons why Capitalists themselves need the state (allied with a
well oiled propaganda machine) to impose and then consolidate the rule of the
minority over otherwise democratically
inclined
workers. And, it is also why they need to call upon various Idealist and
reactionary nostrums to convince the recalcitrant majority that this is all 'for
their benefit'.

It is also why Dialectical Marxists
need the "centralism", but not the "democratic" part of
democratic centralism, and why democracy is dispensed with so readily,
and so often.

Naturally, this degeneration doesn't arise independently of external
social forces. As noted
above, the malignant
features of Dialectical Dementia tend to dominate (1) When the materialist counter-weight provided by the working class is
much more attenuated, (2) When it is totally absent (that is, before the working
class had emerged as an effective social force), or (3) In periods of
"downturn", retreat and defeat. This is, of course, exactly when Dialectical Druggies tend to
're-discover' this 'theory', and when all of them attempt to snort along the
'correct' philosophical line.19

Small wonder then that these petty-bourgeois victims cling on to MD like drunks
to lampposts -- and, alas, just like religionists their opiates.

[DIM = Dialectical
Marxism/Marxist, according to context.]

MD
now dominates and shapes the personal and party identity of such comrades.
Any attack on this sacred doctrine is an attack not just on the glue that holds
each one of them together, but on the cement that holds the party and the entire
DIM "tradition" together.19a

In their own eyes, these professional, petty-bourgeois revolutionaries are special; they live --
no they embody -- the revolution. They have caught the tide of history,
they must keep the faith. Commitment to the revolution on these terms now
helps create militants who, for all the world, appear to suffer from a
dialectical personality disorder of some sort --
one of which is the Leader
Complex.

Again, as noted above, fragmentation is now
synonymous with DIM
itself -- witness the well-aimed joke in Monty Python's
Life of Brian (about the Judean People's Front,
etc.). It is a memorable joke because everyone recognises the central core of truth it expresses.

DIMs
are soon transformed into Militant
Martinets, ostracising and expelling anyone who fails to tow the 'correct' line. Often these
Dialectical Despots have very
powerful personalities, something they can use to good effect in the small ponds
they invariably patrol,and
clearly prefer. Expulsions, splits and bans thus keep their
grouplets small,
and thus easier to control.

The petty-bourgeois revolutionary ego helps keep our movement
fragmented,
small, insular and thus ineffectual --, in preference to its being democratic,
outward-looking and effective. No wonder then that in such
circumstances, democracy goes out the window along with reasonableness --,
and, of course, along with any significant political impact.

In this way, ruling-ideas have come to rule
Dialectical Marxism,
which has helped ruin our movement -- by allowing those who divide, rule.

Each
dialectical ego acts as if he/she imagines that it alone has direct access to the exact
meaning of the dialectic (here
is an excellent recent example), mirroring the sort of individualism
that underpins Protestantism, whereby believers are required to find
their own way to salvation through a thorough study of the Bible and endless disputation.
Among Marxist DM-fans this helps account for the intense and interminable
dialectical debates over vacuous
Hegelian concepts (again, rather like
those that exercised the
Medieval Schoolmen): for example, whether this or that thesis is "abstract",
"positivist", or "one-sided" --, or, in fact, whether "motion precedes matter"
--, or is it the other way round?20

This, of course, also helps explain why each supplicant thinks that no one elsereally
"understands" the dialectic.

[Since no one does in fact understand
it (on that, see Essay Nine Part
One), that is a very easy claim to make -- and one no less
difficult to refute.]

Thus, every opponent is branded in the same
way (on this see below, and
here): all fail to
"understand" the dialectic -- that is, all except the blessed soul that made
that claim!

Rather like the
Old Testament Prophets, it is almost as if such comrades have received
a personal visit from the Self-Developing Idea Itself.

Indeed, the
Road
to Damascus and the Road to Dialectics have more in common than just a capital
"D".

As noted above, in defeat such comrades turn once more to
Dialectical Methadone to insulate their minds
both from reality and constant
failure. And, by all accounts this
ersatz opiate does an excellent job.
In fact, anyone
attempting to argue with any one of these Dialectical Disciples would be far better occupied
head-butting a Billy-goat for all the good it will do. [That allegation is easily
confirmed; check this out.]

However,
narcoleptic stupor
of such depth and intensity -- coupled with the serial lack of clarity required to maintain it
-- only helps engineer more splits, thus more set-backs and defeats, creating the need for
yet another sizeable hit.

And so this Dialectical Monster lumbers on into this new millennium.

No wonder then that Dialectical Marxism is to success what
religion is to peace on earth.

DM has thus infected our movement at every
level, exacerbating sectarianism,
factionalism,
exclusivism,
unreasonableness,
dismissive haughtiness (this endearing
quality displayed most notably by the
High Church Faction),
pomposity, corruption, extreme dogmatism (bordering, it seems, on
clinical paranoia in some cases),
all topped-off with several layers of abuse,
all liberally peppered with delightful phrases like "rant", "diatribe", "screed", "sh*t",
"cr*p", and worse. Indeed, as noted earlier, a leading Marxist Professor of Economics
recently told me (via e-mail) to "Eat sh*t and die!", simply because I asked him
to explain what a 'dialectical contradiction' was, which he, like all the rest,
signally failed to do.

Dialectical vices like these have introduced into each and every tiny sectlet an open and
implacable hatred of practically every other sectlet, and, in some cases,
every
other comrade
-- especially those who dare question this sacred mantra.

If faults such as these were to afflict an individual,
they would provide sufficient grounds for
sectioning under
the mental health act.

Unsurprisingly, the result of all this
dialectical infighting is that the ruling-class don't need to
divide us in order to help consolidate their power; we're quite capable
of making a first-rate job of it ourselves, thank you very much.

Everyone in the movement is painfully aware
of this (some even joke about it
-- again, often along Monty Python
lines!); others excuse
it or explain it away with yet more 'dialectics', or
fruitless calls for unity.21

But, no one confronts these fatal defects
at their poisonous source: the class origin of the petty-bourgeois
revolutionary personality
with its fondness for the divisive
doctrines of a latter-day
Hermeticist
-- Hegel.

If Doctrinaire Marxism is the final outcome
of this mystical creed, it needs a Guru or two to interpret it, rationalise
constant failure, and 'justify' regular splits -- and, of course, to create
still more of the same.

Enter the cult of the personality with its
petty, nit-picking, small-minded, little pond mentality. Enter the "Leader" who knows all,
reveals all, expels all (and, in several notorious cases, kills all): the Dialectical Magus.

As observers of religious cults have noted,
even the most
mundane and
banal of statements put out by such leaders
is
treated with inordinate respect and a level of deference that would shame
orthodox Roman Catholics -- almost as if it had been conveyed from
off
the
mountain top itself, and was possessed of profound mystical significance
and semi-divine authority.

"Thank
you, Stalin. Thank you because I am joyful. Thank you because I am well. No
matter how old I become, I shall never forget how we received Stalin two days
ago. Centuries will pass, and the generations still to come will regard us as
the happiest of mortals, as the most fortunate of men, because we lived in the
century of centuries, because we were privileged to see Stalin, our inspired
leader. Yes, and we regard ourselves as the happiest of mortals because we are
the contemporaries of a man who never had an equal in world history.

"The men of all ages will call on thy name, which is
strong, beautiful, wise and marvellous. Thy name is engraven on every factory,
every machine, every place on the earth, and in the hearts of all men.

"Every time I have found myself in his presence I have
been subjugated by his strength, his charm, his grandeur. I have experienced a
great desire to sing, to cry out, to shout with joy and happiness. And now see
me -- me! -- on the same platform where the Great Stalin stood a year ago. In
what country, in what part of the world could such a thing happen.

"I write books. I am an author. All thanks to thee, O
great educator, Stalin. I love a young woman with a renewed love and shall
perpetuate myself in my children -- all thanks to thee, great educator, Stalin.
I shall be eternally happy and joyous, all thanks to thee, great educator,
Stalin. Everything belongs to thee, chief of our great country. And when the
woman I love presents me with a child the first word it shall utter will be:
Stalin.

"O great Stalin, O leader of
the peoples,
Thou who broughtest man to birth.
Thou who fructifies the earth,
Thou who restorest to centuries,
Thou who makest bloom the spring,
Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords...
Thou, splendour of my spring, O thou,
Sun reflected by millions of hearts."

"Comrade Marlene and the
Party are inseparable; [and] her contribution is the Party itself, is the
unity all of us join together to build upon. The Party is now the material
expression of that unity, of that theoretical world view. That world view is the
world view of the Party, its central leadership and all of its members. And
there will be no other world view…. This was the unity that founded the Party,
this was the unity that safeguarded the Party through purge and two-line
struggle, and this is the unity we will protect and defend at all costs. There
will be no other unity."[Quoted from
here;
see also
here. This passage in fact appears in Lalich (2004), p.164.]

Healy was well-known for fomenting strife among comrades
(with
added violence,
so we are told)
to accentuate the 'contradictions' in his 'Party', along 'sound' dialectical
lines. Similar -- but non-violent -- antics went on in the DWP; on that, see
Lalich (2004), pp.149-92. In the recent crisis in the UK-SWP, Alex Callinicos
has even spoken of "lynch
mobs". Of late, we have also witnessed the divisive political and
'philosophical' gyrations of
Chris Cutrone and the 'Platypus Affiliated Society'.

Compare the above hero worship with Marx's own stated attitude:

"Neither of us cares a straw
for popularity. Let me cite one proof of this: such was my aversion to the
personality cult that at the time of the International, when plagued by numerous
moves -- originating from various countries -- to accord me public honour, I
never allowed one of these to enter the domain of publicity, nor did I ever
reply to them, save with an occasional snub. When Engels and I first joined the
secret communist society, we did so only on condition that anything conducive to
a superstitious belief in authority be eliminated from the Rules. (Lassalle
subsequently operated in the reverse direction.)" [MECW, 45, p.288,
Marx to Wilhem Blos, 10/11/1877. Link added.]

How else could one so easily internally rationalise the
pragmatic contradiction between the widespread abuse of female comrades and a formal
commitment to women's liberation, except by means of this contradictory theory:
DM?23

In this way, we have seen Dialectical Marxism replicate
much of the abuse -- and most of sectarianism --
found
in all forms of
religion. [Again, see for example,
Appendix A.]
And no wonder: both were spawned by similar alienated patterns of ruling-class
thought and social atomisation --, compounded, of course, by a cultic mentality,
which pathological mind-set is further aggravated by a divisive, Hermetic 'theory'
that is capable of rationalising anything whatsoever and its opposite!

As Marx himself inadvertently admitted:

"It's possible that I shall make an ass of
myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little
dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be
right either way." [Marx
to Engels, 15/08/1857, MECW 40, p.152.]

As far as the DM-'faithful' are concerned, all
this will fail to go even in one ear, let alone straight out through the
other. This is because they refuse to accept that any of the pressures that bear
down on the rest of humanity could possibly have any
effect on them,
the DM-elect. Hence, social psychology apparently doesn't apply to these demi-gods!

In stark
contrast, dialecticians are quite happy to reduce their opponents' ideas to
their class origins/position; indeed they do this all the time. Any
attempt to do likewise with respect to their own philosophical ideas --, i.e.,
tracing the fondness leading dialecticians have for Philosophy
back to their own class origin/position --, is
rejected out-of-hand as "crude reductionism"!

Indeed,
Lenin was quite
happy to 'reduce' his opponents' politics to their class position:

"In a word, Comrade
Martov's formula will either
remain a dead letter, an empty phrase, or it will be of benefit mainly and
almost exclusively to 'intellectuals who are thoroughly imbued with
bourgeois individualism' and do not wish to join an organisation. In
words, Martov's formulation defends the interests of the broad strata of
the proletariat, but in fact it serves the interests of the
bourgeois intellectuals, who fight shy of proletarian discipline and
organisation. No one will venture to deny that the intelligentsia,
as a special stratum of modern capitalist society, is characterised, by and
large, precisely by individualism and incapacity for discipline and
organisation (cf., for example,
Kautsky's well-known articles on the
intelligentsia). This, incidentally, is a feature which unfavourably
distinguishes this social stratum from the proletariat; it is one of the
reasons for the flabbiness and instability of the intellectual, which the
proletariat so often feels; and this trait of the intelligentsia is intimately
bound up with its customary mode of life, its mode of earning a livelihood,
which in a great many respects approximates to the petty-bourgeois mode of
existence (working in isolation or in very small groups, etc.). Nor is it
fortuitous, lastly, that the defenders of Comrade Martov's formulation were the
ones who had to cite the example of professors and high school students! It was
not champions of a broad proletarian struggle who, in the controversy over
Paragraph 1, took the field against champions of a radically conspiratorial
organisation, as Comrades
Martynov and
Axelrod thought, but the supporters of
bourgeois-intellectual individualism who clashed with the supporters of
proletarian organisation and discipline." [Lenin
(1947), pp.66-67. Bold emphasis and links added; italic emphases in
the original.]

And later on, quoting
Kautsky
on the social psychology of his opponents, Lenin argued:

"Onecan't help recalling in this connection the brilliant social and
psychological characterisation of this latter quality recently given by Karl
Kautsky. The Social Democratic parties of different countries suffer not
infrequently nowadays from similar maladies, and it would be very, very useful
for us to learn from more experienced comrades the correct diagnosis and the
correct cure. Karl Kautsky's characterisation of certain intellectuals will
therefore be only a seeming digression from our theme.

'Theproblem...that again interests us so keenly today is the
antagonism between the intelligentsiaand the proletariat. My
colleagues (Kautsky is himself an intellectual, a writer and editor) will
mostly be indignant that I admit this antagonism. But it actually exists, and,
as in other cases, it would be the most inexpedient tactics to try to overcome
the fact by denying it. This antagonism is a social one, it relates to
classes, not to individuals. The individual intellectual, like the
individual capitalist, may identify himself with the proletariat in its class
struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not this type
of intellectual, who is still an exception among his class, that we shall
mainly speak of in what follows. Unless otherwise stated, I shall use the
word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual who takes the
stand of bourgeois society, and who is characteristic of the
intelligentsia as a class. This class stands in a certain
antagonism to the proletariat.

'Thisantagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and
capital. The intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life
is bourgeois, and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at
the same time he is compelled to sell the product of his labour, and often his
labour-power, and is himself often enough exploited and humiliated by the
capitalist. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism
to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are
not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and
ideas.

'...Quitedifferent is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means
of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his
personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at
all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his
individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity.
It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a
whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the
need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course
he counts himself among the latter....

'...The typical intellectual à la
Stockmann regards a "compact majority" as a monster that must be
overthrown....'

"Justsuch feeble whining of intellectuals who happened to find themselves in the
minority, and nothing more, was the refusal of Martov
and his friends to be named for office merely because the old circle had not
been endorsed, as were their complaints of a state of siege and emergency laws
'against particular groups', which Martov cared nothing about when Yuzhny
Rabochy and
Rabocheye Dyelo were dissolved, but only came to care about when his
group was dissolved.

"Justsuch feeble whining of intellectuals who happened to find themselves in the
minority was that endless torrent of complaints, reproaches, hints, accusations,
slanders, and insinuations regarding the 'compact majority' which was
started by Martov and which poured out in such a flood at our Party Congress
(and even more so after).

"Theminority bitterly complained of the 'false accusation of opportunism'. Well,
it had to do something to conceal the unpleasant fact that it was
opportunists, who in most cases had followed the anti-Iskra-ists
-- and
partly these anti-Iskra-ists themselves -- that made up the compact
minority, seizing with both hands on the championship of the circle spirit in
Party institutions, opportunism in arguments, philistinism in Party affairs,
and the instability and wishy-washiness of the intellectual." [Ibid.,
pp.121-24. Bold emphases and links added; italic
emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]

"[Y]ou
[James Burnham -- RL], likewise, seek an ideal party democracy which would
secure forever and for everybody the possibility of saying and doing whatever
popped into his head, and which would insure the party against bureaucratic
degeneration. You overlook a trifle, namely, that the party is not an arena for
the assertion of free individuality, but an instrument of the proletarian
revolution; that only a victorious revolution is capable of preventing the
degeneration not only of the party but of the proletariat itself and of modern
civilization as a whole. You do not see that our American section is not sick
from too much centralism -- it is laughable even to talk about it -- but from
a monstrous abuse and distortion of democracy on the part of petty-bourgeois
elements. This is at the root of the present crisis....

"Petty-bourgeois,
and especially declassed elements, divorced from the proletariat, vegetate in an
artificial and shut-in environment. They have ample time to dabble in politics
or its substitute. They pick out faults, exchange all sorts of tidbits and
gossip concerning happenings among the party 'tops.' They always locate a leader
who initiates them into all the 'secrets.' Discussion is their native element.
No amount of democracy is ever enough for them. For their war of words they seek
the fourth dimension. They become jittery, they revolve in a vicious circle, and
they quench their thirst with salt water. Do you want to know the organizational
program of the opposition? It consists of a mad hunt for the fourth dimension of
party democracy. In practice this means burying politics beneath discussion; and
burying centralism beneath the anarchy of the intellectual circles. When a few
thousand workers join the party, they will call the petty-bourgeois anarchists
severely to order. The sooner, the better." [Trotsky
(1971), pp.116-17. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform
to the conventions adopted at this site.]

So, Trotsky saw nothing wrong with applying
this analysis to the ideas formed by fellow Marxists. But, which
Trotskyist accuses Trotsky of "crude reductionism"?

Indeed, this is how Trotsky
analysed the clique around Stalin:

"The entire effort of Stalin,
with whom at that time Zinoviev and Kamenev were working hand in hand, was
thenceforth directed to freeing the party machine from the control of the
rank-and-file members of the party. In this struggle for 'stability' of the
Central Committee, Stalin proved the most consistent and reliable among his
colleagues. He had no need to tear himself away from international problems; he
had never been concerned with them. The petty bourgeois outlook of the new
ruling stratum was his own outlook. He profoundly believed that the task of
creating socialism was national and administrative in its nature. He looked upon
the Communist International as a necessary evil would should be used so far as
possible for the purposes of foreign policy. His own party kept a value in his
eyes merely as a submissive support for the machine." [Trotsky
(1977), p.97. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]

In which case, while it seems
quite legitimate for
dialecticians like Trotsky and Lenin
to 'reduce' their enemies and opponents' (and, indeed, fellow
Marxists')ideas to their class position and/or class
origin, it isn't legitimate to do the same to theirs.

Such theorists are quite
right to point out that when, for example, union militants are drafted into the
trade union machine, becoming bureaucrats themselves, their new material
conditions have a predictable effect on the attitudes they adopt and the ideas
they form. However, they
will resist with no little vehemence the same conclusion when it is applied
to them, their material circumstances and/or their class position.23a0

If this class analysis is rejected for some
reason, the only other conclusion possible is
that it must be a sheer coincidence that revolutionary parties
the world over have replicated, time and again, practically
every single fault and foible that afflicts the god-botherers among us -- even down to their reliance on an obscure book about an
invisible 'Being' (i.e., in this case, Hegel's Logic).

So, while all these faults and foibles have
well-known material/social causes when they descend upon the alienated, the superstitious and the
gullible,
they apparently have no cause whatsoever when they similarly grace the
sanctified lives of our very own Immaculate Dialectical Saints. In which
case, faults and foibles
like these can safely be ignored, never spoken about in polite company.

Until,
that is, such comrades are caught with their dialectical pants down -- and even
then accusations can be brushed aside as "bourgeois propaganda", or as
part of a
"witch-hunt".

This
means that the Dialectical Merry-go-round can take another spin across the
flatlands of failure, its participants ever more convinced of their semi-divine
infallibility and pristine ideological purity.

To that
end,
we are presented with an "insistence" on"Totality"
(which is left conveniently undefined),
obscure "Infinities",
a declaration that "truth is the whole" [Hegel
(1977), p.11; Preface, paragraph 20], and various assorted "Absolutes"
(all of which are left
theologically vague).

MD
must not only be able to weather defeat, it must be capable of 'foreseeing'
future victories in each set-back.
To that end, we are told that there are UOs everywhere (for a particularly good example of this
phenomenon, see below), all
operating under the watchful eye of the NON. That particular
'Law' informs us that everything "inevitably"
turns into its opposite;
if so, failure
(that is, if the latter is ever acknowledged) can't help but turn into success --
one day...24

This theory
must, therefore, 'allow' its adepts to re-configure each defeat as a 'victory' waiting in the
wings.
To that end, we are told that appearances "contradict" underlying "essence", meaning that the long-term failure of
DIM
can be ignored (since its seemingly disastrous record isn't, after all,
really real, it just looks that way to those who do not 'understand'
dialectics), or it can be blamed on anything but the theory that
has delivered this comforting message to the faithful.

MD must
thereforetranscend the limitations of ordinary, 'formal
thinking' -- which is one reason why the attainment of 'absolute truth' has to be
projected into the future, to the end
of an infinite asymptotic
meander, insulating it from easy disconfirmation in the here-and-now.
In this vale of tears, all we can hope to achieve is 'relative truth' (accept, of
course, for that absolute truth itself!).
This also helps explain why DM-fans ignore awkward
facts that do not fit the Ideal Picture with which the Dialectical Classics have
saddled them.

[On all of the
above, see Essays Two through Eleven Part Two. On the
lengths to
which dialecticians will go to ignore things they can't explain, have
never even thought about, or do not like, see the links
indexed here. As readers will soon
see,
Creationists are rank amateurs in comparison!]

In addition, MD must
encourage and/or facilitate a level of theoretical (and thus tactical) flexibility that places it outside, if
not way beyond the normal canons of reason -- and of reasonableness -- enabling its more skilled adepts
to change direction (anti-democratically, opportunistically, and/or
inconsistently) at the drop of a negative particle.

To that end, regular appeals
are made to the contradictions that are integral to DM. Since
the latter are found throughout the universe, so we are told, they must also feature in
'applied dialectics'
if it is reflect the real world and then help change it. In that case, 'applied
dialectics' is riddled
with contradictions, which is regarded as one of its strengths,
not a
fail flaw! This heady brew
now 'allows' skilled
dialecticians to argue for anything they like and its opposite. [On exactly how
they
manage do this, see below.]

Moreover, this theory must lie way beyond any
possible doubt, so that if anyone attempts to
question it they can be ignored on the grounds that they just do not 'understand'
dialectics --, which is, once more, a pretty safe accusation to make since no
one understands it! [On that allegation, see
Part One of this Essay.]

If there is no settled view of DM (or if it
is expressed in sufficiently vague and equivocal terms, and is left in that
condition for
generations, frozen in a nineteenth century time warp), anyone who disagrees
with the latest dialectical line can be accused of "deviation" or "revisionism"
-- and hence of betraying Marxism. Needless to say, this approach to theory is the non-existent
deity's gift to opportunists, control freaks and sectarians, of whom Marxism has
had more than its fair share.

As one left-wing blogger has pointed out with
respect to the WRP:

"To be sure, [the WRP] did
acquire a very bad reputation over the years for having a thuggish and violent
internal regime, sometimes spilling over into physical attacks on members of
other groups; for its habit of slandering anyone who disagreed with it as an
agent of the CIA, the KGB, or both; and for an impenetrable 'philosophy'
whose main function was to justify whatever Gerry wanted to do at any particular
moment." [Quoted from
here; accessed 05/02/2013. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to
conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]

Even
better, this theory must be impossible to refute. This is a convenient
implication of the Hegelian dialectic, which we
have already encountered,
whereby every attempt to
oppose it, reveal its contradictions or challenge it is viewed as further proof of its correctness
-- since it alleged that to do so is to use the dialectic itself implicitly
-- providing yet more grist to the Hermetic mill. Hence, any putative 'refutation' merely
doubles up and returns as confirmation of a system that glories in just such
contradictions! The more heads that are cut off this
Hydra,
the more it grows in in their place!25

[It is worth pointing out that I haven't even attempted to 'refute' Hegel's
dialectic or even the alleged 'rational core' appropriated by Marxist
dialecticians. What I have argued is that both versions are far too
vague and confused for anyone to be able to decide whether or not they are true,
let alone try to refute them.]

DM can't disappoint, nor can it fail its acolytes since,
according to another of its tenets, humanity will never actually possess
the
complete picture of anything (apparently not even of
an ordinary
glass tumbler!), let
alone everything. So, like
the will of 'God', the DM-Absolute (the "Totality") moves ever onward,
mysteriously, its twists and turns capable of being fully 'comprehended' only
by our "glorious" leaders (who, up to now, have provedincapable of
explaining this 'theory' to a single living soul).

Consequently, what might at first sight appear to be an
engagingly modest admission (i.e., that no one knows the final truth
about anything, or that all theories are "partially true", etc., etc.)
soon turns into its opposite. That acknowledgement is now transformed into a stick with
which to beat the opposition: if no one knows the final truth, then
neither does an erstwhile
critic. Only the Party (with its Doctors of Dialectics) can be relied on to
interpret this infinitely plastic theory aright -- by appealing,
like the Roman Catholic Church,
to "tradition" and authority.25a

Indeed, the following neatly sums up the
attitude of most Bolshevik-style parties:

"Comrade Marlene and the
Party are inseparable; [and] her contribution is the Party itself, is the
unity all of us join together to build upon. The Party is now the material
expression of that unity, of that theoretical world view. That world view is the
world view of the Party, its central leadership and all of its members. And
there will be no other world view…. This was the unity that founded the Party,
this was the unity that safeguarded the Party through purge and two-line
struggle, and this is the unity we will protect and defend at all costs. There
will be no other unity." [Quoted from
here.]

[While whoever wrote the above was perhaps
more honest than most comrades are, in practice the vast majority behave as if
this were written about them and their own party.]

Thus is created the cult of the Central
Committee, and on this is built the aforementioned Leader Cult,
the Dialectical Guru. Alongside this arrives the doctrine that
only a few (oracular) individuals (or committees) are fountains of 'dialectical
truth', and can be quoted as such -- and are quoted as such --, over and over again to
confound waverers and infidels.25b

In such a
topsy-turvy world of silicate-loving, 'dialectical ostriches', the one with
his/her head buried deepest in the sand is plainly leadership material.26

However, the spurious superiority of MD
over 'ordinary consciousness' is secured by means of several exclusivising
tricks: (1) The use of unintelligible jargon that no one understands, or seems able to
explain (without employing even more jargon, of equal obscurity);
(2) An
appeal to authority (sometimes called the "real Marxist tradition");27
(3) Regular appeals to the sacred DM-texts, linked to an 'orthodox'
interpretative tradition of the latter, now ossified in constantly recycled and highly
repetitive commentaries -- the aforementioned Dialectical Mantra.28

However, dialectically-distracted comrades refuse to admit that the demonstrable link that
exists between MD and the theories of previous generations of mystics in any way counts against it --
as one would imagine ought to be the case with those who proudly and
openly proclaim their materialist/scientific
credentials. Ironically, the fact that virtually every DM-thesis
finds echo in
most mystical
systems-of-thought is paradoxically regarded as one of its strengths, not one of its
weaknesses!29

This theory must also insist that in
spite of a formal acceptance of the
Heraclitean Flux,
its core ideas should
remain rigidly sealed against change. And so they are. In that case, over
the last hundred years or so there has been virtually no innovation of note in DM
-- just more
epicycles. [This
allegation will be substantiated in Essay Fourteen Part Two.]

Indeed, those with their
heads deeply buried in dune can hardly boast of a theory that shifts with the Heraclitean
sands.

Furthermore, this theory must be the source of
boundless optimism, so that despite the way things appear to be (to those lost in the mists of "commonsense" and
"formal thinking", of course), the NON guarantees that the underlying tendencies
at work throughout the universe favour the dialectical cause -- even if things sometimes need hurrying along
a little with
human intervention.29a

Dialectics provides all of the faithful with some of
the above, and some of the faithful with all of the above. This helps explain its
universal
acceptance by practically all shades of revolutionary socialism, as well as its longevity, the
semi-religious
loyalty it engenders in those held in its thrall -- and why it
will never be abandoned.

DM-fans would rather die with their heads
buried in these Parmenidean Sands than face
material reality in all its complexity with even a hint
of courage
-- or
honesty.

However, this also helps explain a rather curious anomaly, which is as follows: as the working-class
grows ever larger the influence that
DIM has on it continues to dwindle.

Parallel to this -- but not unrelated to it --, our movement continues to
flounder and fragment, which ongoing degeneration is plainly not unconnected with its steadily dwindling influence on the class struggle. Moreover, the fact that workers ignore our
movement en masse means that the materialist counter-weight they bring with them into Marxism has no influence precisely where
it might count: on our ideas.

The dearth of active socialist workers thus means that the unifying force of the
class struggle by-passes our movement, which, because it is
dominated by petty-bourgeois individuals, continues to splinter and
disintegrate.

So Marxist Idealism lumbers on while its theorists constantly think of new ways to
make these awkward facts disappear.

The class origin of the majority
of professional revolutionaries (who, for allor most of their
lives do not share the lives and struggles of ordinary workers) analysed
in the preceding sections, means
that this alien-class theory -- DM -- consolidates and strengthens their sense of
exclusivity. Indeed, it is why this theory appeals to petty-bourgeois and de-classé revolutionaries --
most of whom populate the higher echelons of our movement and thus control its ideas.

"Members of the SWP must
understand what is at stake in the crisis rocking our organization. Not
only is there already a steady outflow of members resigning in disgust
at this farrago and its handling by the leadership, but now other
organizations of the left are becoming
hesitant about working with us,
and in some cases are
openly boycotting and censuring us.

"This is a call to members to
stay and fight. It is also to urge that we do so without illusions about
the nature of the fight that we face.

"Many of us have argued
strongly that catastrophic errors of principle and process on the part
of the leadership have taken us to this. But even those who -- I firmly
believe wrongly -- disagree about this must recognise the situation we
are in. This has rapidly also become a catastrophe for us strategically.
Our name is becoming toxic. Our credibility as a collective and as
individual activists is being grossly compromised, and is on the verge
of being permanently tainted. We all know the allegations that any
future potential recruit who takes two minutes to research us online
will read. The hoary accusations of the loyalists that those of us
expressing concerns are looking 'inward' to 'blogland' and are not in
the 'real world' have never looked so pitiful as they do now. This is a
real world, acute crisis, of the leaderships making.

"As we 'dissidents' have repeatedly stressed, the
fact that we are on the verge of permanently losing our credibility is
irrespective of the truth or otherwise of the allegations of rape and
sexual harassment. (These, of course, deserve sensitive and appropriate
examination in their own right.) This fact inheres in the grotesque and
sexist nature of the questions posed to the accusers; in the
'wagon-circling' attitude of the leadership and its loyalists; in the
failures and evasions of accountability that meant the processes
involved could ever have been thought appropriate; and now in the
belief-beggaringly inadequate and arrogant response of the CC to the
greatest crisis we have ever faced. These are all political failings of
astonishing proportions.

"We must not only deal with
this but be seen publicly to be dealing with it. A 'quiet revolution'
will be no revolution at all. There is one chance to save the SWP, and
to do so means reclaiming it. We must be the party whose membership saw
that there was a catastrophe unfolding, refused to heed our own failed
leadership's injunctions to fall into line, and reclaimed the party and
the best elements of our IS tradition. If we fail in this, the SWP is
finished as a serious force....

"By far the lion's share of
blame for our parlous situation lies squarely with the CC and its
loyalists. However, none of us can avoid hard questions. What got us
here was not merely the failures of this particular CC, but of our
structures. These structures concealed from the members perfectly
legitimate debate within the party; pathologised dissent on the CC and
among the membership; and at worst legitimated whispering campaigns and
bullying against members considered 'troublemakers'. We could have
stopped this train wreck at an earlier stage if the membership had been
able and ready to call bullshit on the CC's bullshit.

"To overthrow these
problems requires, among other things, a huge shift in internal culture.
This, of course, is not possible in isolation from the structures that
we have worked under. These have enabled the CC's top-down and
dissent/discussion-phobic style and mistrust of the membership; and
among the membership itself have encouraged a damaging culture of
deferral to the leadership." [China
Mieville, quoted from
here, 17/01/2013. Bold emphases and links added.]

But, why does this sort of thing keep
happening? Is the UK-SWP just unlucky? And, why has this been endemic on
the left now for many generations?

"The CC now unfortunately
represents a conservative layer now firmly ingrained in the party and focused on
preserving its position. Many of its members have worked for the party for a
decade or more, they rely on the party as an income and have become career
bureaucrats entrenched in their jobs. Somewhere along the way the leadership
stopped being a group of leading revolutionaries and started to be a
self-serving political class in their own right. Now more than ever the party
needs effective and democratic leadership made up of the best people in the
class, not people who haven't set foot in a workplace for decades and who are in
my opinion totally divorced from the class." [Quoted from
here; 14/01/2013. Bold emphasis added. Minor typo corrected.]

"The SWP has a particular
understanding of the role of the bureaucracy within trades unions.
We view them as neither workers nor bosses, but rather as a
vacillating force between the two. The bureaucrat is insulated from
the day-to-day life of the worker -- of having the boss breathing
down their neck, and from the collective interest that workers have
within workplaces. They depend for their continued existence, this
insulation, and the level of prestige they hold, on the continuation
of the capitalist system -- if there were no longer any capitalist
class to negotiate with, there would no longer be any need for the
bureaucrats. Nothing terrifies a bureaucrat more than being chucked
back into the same world the rest of us, as workers, inhabit. There
is an old story of an
RMT NEC member
many years ago (before
Bob
Crow) who wished to support a strike ballot that the General
Secretary opposed. The General Secretary advised him that if he did
so, he'd be back working on the tracks within days. The NEC member
withdrew his support for the ballot.

"And it is this recognition
that the interests of the bureaucracy are not those of the working
class that leads us as revolutionary socialists to believe the only
truly effective way to organise inside trades unions is on a rank
and file basis. We are with the bureaucrats for as long as they
support our demands -- we fight without them when they don't. And we
recognise a bureaucratisation that takes place when workers are
removed from the shop floor -- which is why, for example, it is
officially only in exceptional circumstances that SWP members are
allowed to take elected trade union positions on 100% facility time.
Because we recognise that you cannot act in the interests of the
working class if you exist separately from it. I want to illustrate
that a failure to apply this analysis to the SWP itself is at the
root of many of the problems we now face.

"While very limited steps
have been taken in recent years to address this, the Central
Committee is made up almost entirely of full-time party workers (and
it is notable that of the two CC members removed from the preferred
slate 48 hours before conference, one is a respected trade unionist
and the other is centrally involved in arguably the broadest united
front the party is engaged in). This is a separation from the
outside world, and the experiences of the membership. Worse, the
slate system as currently constituted is designed to prevent any
alternative leadership from emerging -- as we are told to correct any
error we must replace the CC wholesale; very difficult if they are
also the party workers who run the apparatus. As pretty much the
only way to be elected to the CC is to be nominated by the existing
CC, this means CC members owe their positions to the other CC
members, not to the party membership. And this means that, despite
the party's Democracy Commission passing policy in favour of it,
disagreements on the CC are not aired in front of the party
membership, but rather are usually dealt with privately, with the
first most members know of it being when a CC member mysteriously
disappears off the slate. I would argue the loyalty to each other
this creates amongst CC members leads to many situations, such as
those around Comrade Delta and the expulsions of the
Facebook Four, being dealt with bureaucratically and behind
closed doors and then presented to the party as a fait accompli.
Party policies and 'turns' are decided in similar fashion, with a
National Committee or Party Council presented with a CC document
that is discussed and then invariably approved, usually without any
discussion in the wider party, let alone the class.

"This also has the effect of
encouraging sycophancy, Comrades who wish to develop their standing
in the party, be selected for slates in trade union elections, be
added to the CC themselves, or be touted as a public speaker, do so
by developing a position of ultra-loyalty to the CC (these are the
party members who some refer to as 'hacks'). Party workers are all
appointed by the CC, not by the membership, and are threatened with
the sack if they dare venture their own political ideas that run
contrary to those of the CC. All of this has more in common with the
organisation of Stalinist Parties than with the libertarian roots of
the IS tradition. The party actually starts to become the caricature
painted of it by sectarians and red-baiters.

"At its most extreme, the
sycophancy appears cult-like. A number of CC members are big fans of
jazz music. Under their leadership over the past few years,
the party has organised a number of (mostly loss-making) jazz gigs
as fundraising events. Regardless of their own musical tastes,
comrades were told they were disloyal if they didn't purchase
tickets. This elevates the cultural tastes of the official
leadership to a point of political principle; and clearly is not in
any way a healthy state of affairs." [Quoted from
here. Bold emphases and links added. Minor typo corrected.]

These echo Trotsky's analysis of
substitutionism (covered in
Part One of this
Essay), but they omit (1) Any mention of the wider structural problems our
movement faces (i.e., the fact that the situation described by the above comrade
has been a core feature of Marxist parties for well over a hundred and thirty
years), and they completely ignore (2) The historical and ideological
roots of this malaise -- nor do they consider (3) Why this keeps happening,
and not just to the UK-SWP.

Only if Marxists in general become aware of
serious structural, class and ideological problems we face is there any hope that the movement can extricate itself from this
toxic morass.

Unfortunately, as is the case with other
forms of drug addiction, clarity
of vision is the last thing one can expect of those in the 'leadership' -- those who control the production and dissemination of ideas --, who have serious dialectical-opiate
dependency problems themselves.

As these Essays have shown, and as experience confirms, this is indeed
what we find.

There are in fact two
main categories of dialectician:
'Low
Church'
and 'High
Church'. This distinction roughly corresponds to that between active
revolutionaries and Academic Marxists (of course, there is some
overlap at the margin). The members of neither faction are seekers of the truth,
since, like Hegel, they have found it. As Glenn Magee points out:

"Hegel is not a philosopher.
He is no lover or seeker of wisdom -- he believes he has found it. Hegel writes
in the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, 'To help bring philosophy
closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title of "love
of knowing" and be actual knowledge -- that is what I have set before me'
(Miller, 3; PC, 3). By the end of the
Phenomenology, Hegel claims to have
arrived at Absolute Knowledge, which he identifies with wisdom.

"Hegel's claim to have
attained wisdom is completely contrary to the original Greek conception of
philosophy as the love of wisdom, that is, the ongoing pursuit rather than the
final possession of wisdom. His claim is, however, fully consistent with the
ambitions of the
Hermetic tradition, a current of thought that derives its name
from the so-called
Hermetica (or
Corpus Hermeticum), a collection
of Greek and Latin treatises and dialogues written in the first or second
centuries A.D. and probably containing ideas that are far older. The legendary
author of these works is
Hermes Trismegistus ('Thrice-Greatest Hermes').
'Hermeticism' denotes a broad tradition of thought that grew out of the
'writings of Hermes' and was expanded and developed through the infusion of
various other traditions. Thus,
alchemy,
Kabbalism,
Lullism, and the mysticism
of
Eckhart and
Cusa -- to name just a few examples
-- became intertwined with the
Hermetic doctrines. (Indeed, Hermeticism is used by some authors simply to mean
alchemy.) Hermeticism is also sometimes called
theosophy, or
esotericism; less
precisely, it is often characterized as mysticism, or
occultism." [Magee (2008), p.1. Quotation
marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Links and bold
emphasis alone added.]

Much the same can be said about Marxist
Dialecticians of both Denominations (whether they realise this or not).

Comrades of this
persuasion
cleave to the original, unvarnished truth laid down in the sacred DM-texts
(authored by Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, and/or Mao).
Many of these simple souls are highly proficient at quoting or paraphrasing endless passages from the
Holy Books in answer to everything and anything, just like the faithful who bow to the East or who fill the
Gospel
Halls around the world. Their unquestioning faith is as impressive as it is
un-Marxist.

[An excellent recent
example of this affliction, which was in fact prompted by the current crisis in the UK-SWP,
can be found
here. (In January 2013, I posted a mini-refutation (based on some of the points made in
Essay Six) of an article of
Trotsky's on DM that had been republished at the latter site, but as of
September
2014 it is still 'waiting moderation'!)]

LCDs are, by-and-large, active
revolutionaries, committed to 'building the party'. Ironically, however, they have
unwisely
conspired to do the exact opposite, helping keep their parties small
because of the continual splits and expulsions they engineer. This is a rather fitting
pragmatic contradiction that the 'Dialectical Deity' has visited upon these, the
least of its slaves.

Of course, LCDs can't see the irony in all this (even
when it is pointed out to them -- I know, I have lost count of the number of
times I have tried!), since they too
haven't taken the lens caps off.

So, despite the fact that every last one of these
short-sighted individuals
continually strives to "build the party", after 140 years few revolutionary groups
can boast membership rolls
that rise much above the
risible. In fact, all we have witnessed since WW2
is yet more fragmentation, but still no mass movement.

More often than not,
HCDs
reject the idea that the dialectic operates in nature, sometimes inconsistently
using the aforementioned 'Law' to account for the evolutionary 'leap' that
underpinned our development from an ape-like ancestor (which tactic allows them to
claim that human history and development are unique), just as they are
equally dismissive of simple
LCD souls for their adherence to every last
word found in the DM-classics.31

Some
might object that the above is a caricature of 'dialectical thought'; they
might want to argue that DM/MD are based
on evidence and on the practice and experience of the party/humanity. Alas, that
rather naive belief
was laid to rest in Essays Two and
Seven, as well as in
Part One of this Essay.

It is
worth adding that there are notable exceptions to these sweeping generalisations -- some academic
Marxists do actively engage with the class struggle. The point, however, is that the
'High Theory' they churn out is irrelevant in this regard. Indeed, I can't think of a single
example of the work of an academic Marxist that has had an impact on the class
war -- except perhaps negatively. (Any who disagree with this indictment are invited to
e-mail me with the details of any
counter-example they can think of.)

To be
sure, one or two
comrades have tried to come up with a few practical applications of
'the dialectic'. Alas, I have shown that all of them fail -- on
that, seehere and
here.

This has meant that the baleful influence of
Hegelian Hermeticism becomes important at key historical junctures (i.e., those involving defeat
and/or major set-back), since it acts as a materialist-soundingalternative
to mainstream, Traditional Thought -- indeed, as we saw was the case with Lenin
after the defeat of the 1905 Revolution in Russia.

Dialectics (especially those parts that have
been infected with the lethal HCD-strain) thus taps into thought-forms that have
dominated intellectual life for over two thousand years -- i.e., those that
define the 'legitimate' boundaries of 'genuine' philosophy, and hence those which
amount to little more than systematic anddogmatic thesis-mongering,
aggravated by the
invention of increasingly
baroque,
a priori theories.

So, because of its
thoroughly traditional nature, DM is able to appeal to the closet "god-builders"
and dialectical mystics that revolutionary politics seems to attract -- and
who, in general, appear to congregate at the apex of this ever-growing heap of
dialectical disaster.

However, one question has remained unanswered: How is it even remotely possible for the vast majority of revolutionary socialists
to have
adopted a supposedly alien-class ideology, as this site alleges? At first sight it seems
inconceivable that leading socialists like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxembourg, or
Trotsky -- comrades who possessed impeccable revolutionary credentials -- could have maintained a consistent
revolutionary stance if the account of the origin and nature of
MD given in these Essays is correct. An ideological
compromise of this order of magnitude would surely have had major, if not disastrous effects
on revolutionary practice; indeed, it would have rendered Marxism totally ineffectual.

In fact, and contrary to the ideas advanced at this site, it could be argued that
MD has
actually been successfully tested in practice for well over a
hundred and forty years.

These considerations alone seem to make
the abstract allegations advanced at this site impossible to accept.

Even so, and in spite of constant claims to
the contrary, DM/MD in fact have no practical
applications (other than the negative
effects outlined above, and again below).

This doesn't mean that
revolutionaries haven't continually toyed with dialectical phraseology in
some of their
practical deliberations. Certainly, DM-theorists can talk the talk; they areindeed experts jargonisers.

But, as we will see, it is impossible for
them to walk the walk.

Admittedly, books outlining revolutionary
theory are packed with analyses that seem to contradict the above allegations, and
which purport to show that dialectics has played
a central role in Marxist politics since its inception. However, what revolutionaries
mightwant to claim about their practice and what they are actually capable
of acting upon as part of that practice are two entirely different
things.

[DIM = Dialectical
Marxism/Marxist, depending on context.]

These Essays have shown
time and again that DM-theses make no sense at all, just as they have shown that
DIM is to success what the US
Military is to peace on earth. This means that while dialecticians may write -- or,
indeed, constantly intone DM-phrases --, it isn't possible for
them to form a single coherentDM-thought, and thus act upon
it.

Of course, this places dialecticians in no worse a position than other
metaphysicians (whose theories are
similarly bereft of practical import); no worse perhaps,
but certainly no better.32

If a sentence purporting to express
a thought is itself incoherent, then no one uttering or writing it can mean
anything by it (over and above, perhaps, certain contingent or consequential effects;
for example they might intend to amuse, impress, confuse, bamboozle, distract, or startle their interlocutors). [More on
this in Essay Thirteen
Part
Three.]

The words employed in such sentences can't
represent anything that could become the content of a coherent thought, and
hence motivate a corresponding set of actions (trivial examples excepted, of
course).33

To be sure, dialectical phrases can be, and
have been wheeled out to 'justify' or 'rationalise' decisions that have already
been taken for
hard-headed political reasons (which means these phrases function rather like the
empty rituals
and incantations that assorted Priests, Bishops and Imams have uttered over the centuries to 'justify'
war,
royal privilege, exploitation, oppression, and gross inequality -- or, indeed, the nonsense phrases stage magicians utter to impress their audiences).

Furthermore, as noted in Essay Twelve Part One,
because DM-theses are both
non-sensicalandincoherent they are
incapable of 'reflecting'
anything in the natural or social world, and, a fortiori, any processes underlying
one or both.

In that case, they can't possibly help
revolutionaries change society.

Except, of course, for the worse.

These allegations might at first sight appear to be
rather dogmatic, since it seems plain that if something can be uttered,
or perhaps written, it must be capable of being thought, and hence
acted upon.

In reply, the rest of this section will be
devoted to defending these 'controversial' allegations.

We encountered a similar problem in Essay Twelve
Part One,
connected with Lenin's attempt to specify what could or couldn't be thought
concerning
matter and motion:

It turned out that what Lenin wanted to 'say' vitiated the
content (or, rather, the lack of 'content') of what he appeared to mean
by saying it. In the end, it
emerged that he couldn't actually think what he imagined he
could since M1 fell apart in the very act of 'thinking' whatever it
was he thought he wanted to say by means of it. So, in asserting that motion
without matter is "unthinkable" he had to do what he said could not be done; i.e., he had to think the offending words "motion without matter...",
or their content. For M1 to be true, Lenin would have to know what was being
ruled out as forever false -- plainly, motion without matter. But, he had just declared that this
very possibility was "unthinkable".

So, in order to
know what was being ruled out in the above sense he would have to be able to
declare that the following sentence, for example, could only ever be false, never true:

M2: Motion sometimes occurs without matter.

But, if such a sentence can
only be false, and never true, it turns out that it can't actually be false. That is
because if a sentence is false, it is untrue. And yet, if we can't say under what circumstances such a sentence is true,
then we certainly can't say in what way it falls short so that it
could be untrue, and hence false. For Lenin to be able to declare M2
untrue, he would have to know what made it true, so that he knew what he
was in fact ruling out. But, he was in no position to do this, for the truth of
M2 he had already declared "unthinkable".

Conversely, if a proposition can only ever be true, the conditions that would make it
false are likewise excluded. In that case, if we can't say under what circumstances such a
sentence is
false then we certainly can't say in what way it falls short of these conditions so that it
could be true, and hence not false. In which case, its
truth (or non-falsehood) similarly falls by the wayside. Hence, Lenin was in no
position to declare M1 true, because he was in no position to declare it false.

[A slightly longer, and I hope clearer explanation of this idea can be found
here; I deal with several obvious, and a few less obvious objections to this
line-of-argument in Essay Twelve Part
One.]

So, not even Lenin could say what it was he
was trying to rule in or rule out.

If we ignore the remote possibility that
Lenin either wanted to (1) utter complete nonsense, or (2) puzzle his readers, the above
argument implies that there wasn't in fact anything that Lenin intended to say, nor was there anything in his words that he
could have communicated to anyone that was capable of being put into
practice -- or, indeed, which could have had any practical implications whatsoever (other than negative,
once more). If we are in no position to think the truth or the falsehood
of M1, we are certainly in no position to say what the world would have to look
like if M1 formed part of revolutionary practice and was to be 'acted upon'.

[The problem here, of course, is that it isn't easy to
think of a single DM-thesis that could plausibly be used in practice, so
if the last sentence above looks rather odd, that is the fault of this theory,
not the present author! The only point being made is that if it is logically
impossible to decide whether or not a certain thesis is true, then it will also
be logically impossible to decide if it has been implemented correctly, or at
all! So, it is no wonder DM-theses
aren't actually
used by dialecticians! (On that, see
here. In over 25 years of
searching I have only been able to find two examples where comrades have
tried to argue that DM has some sort of practical use/application. I have
neutralised both of them here and
here.)]

To see more clearly how this relates in
general to the
issues raised in this Essay,
consider the following sentence schema:

S1: NN thought that p.

If "p" is taken to be a schematic letter
replaceable by an empirical or factual proposition (such as "The Nile is
longer than the Thames"), then clearly the
sense that that
proposition already has will enable it to become the content of a thought
that NN could entertain, truly or falsely. However, if the sentence
substitutable for "p" makes no sense, then not only would the words it contains
fail to express a proposition (since it would then be unclear what was being
proposed or put forward for consideration), it would be impossible for NN to think a thought by means of
it. That is because
a sentence lacking a sense cannot express a true or false thought (once more, as we saw was the case with Lenin
and M1 --, or, indeed, would be the case with M3):

M3: Lenin thought that motion
without matter is unthinkable.

M3a: I think that motion
without matter is unthinkable.

M3b: Motion
without matter is unthinkable.

[Of course, it is certainly possible for
anyone to write -- or utter -- M3 (or
its first person equivalent, M3a), indeed, as Lenin himself might have done, but as we have just seen,
M3b's supposed content would mean M3 itself would immediately self-destruct. (There is more on
this in Note 35a.)]

Howsoever M3/M3a/M3b are repackaged, they are incapable of
making any sort of sense.

It is worth reminding ourselves that it isn't an 'act of thinking' that gives a sentence its sense. If that were so, then
anything could make sense, and the clause "that is an act of thinking" would itself
become problematic.34

Indeed, the opposite of this is the case. The
sense a proposition already has is what enables us to think it.

[The contrary supposition gains credence from
the Cartesian
idea that an 'act of thought' is a private, internal episode, which takes place
in 'the mind' or in 'consciousness' divorced from, or anterior to social
convention, and which gives meaning to our words, and sense to our
indicative
sentences. I have covered this topic in detail in Essays Twelve
Part One and Thirteen
Part Three, so the reader is
directed
there for more details.]

Consider the following
illegitimate substitution instance of "p" in S1:

S1: NN thought that p.

S2: NN thought that the speed mice
inconsiderable sunset the colour red was twice acidic, but not Tarquin on
between three o'clock recidivist it squared less before, if grinder.

S2a: The speed mice
inconsiderable sunset the colour red was twice acidic, but not Tarquin on
between three o'clock recidivist it squared less before, if grinder.

S2a makes no sense, and so while NN might
attempt to mouth this set of words he wouldn't be able to form it into a coherent thought (assuming,
once more, that S2a isn't a coded
message of some sort).35

The problem with S2a is not connected with a
lack of imagination in the one who uttered it, or in his/her audience. It isn't that
howsoever hard we try we can form no idea of a primary colour
that is connected to a "speed mice inconsiderable sunset", which has a
pH value close to
seven, twice, but only (Tarquin?) on (?) "between three o'clock…", etc. There is no such
coherent thought to form. In turn, this is not because of the facts of chemistry,
chromatology,
or rodent biology -- or even because of the rules we have for telling the time
of day. It is because S2/S2a represent a radical misuse of
language, as should seem obvious. Anyone who regularly uttered sentences like S2a would
probably be diagnosed as an
aphasic, or
as suffering from some other neurological/psychological condition.

While S2a is a clear case of
extreme incoherence, DM-doctrines require a little more encouragement before they
self-destruct (as we saw with M3 and M3b).

M3: Lenin thought that motion
without matter is unthinkable.

M3b: Motion
without matter is unthinkable.

As argued more fully in Essay Twelve
Part One, that is because DM-theorists (just like other
metaphysicians) mistake the
rules we have for the use of words as if they reflected substantive features of
the world. They misconstrue the medium for its supposed message.

Dialecticians
compound this error by appropriating ideas found
almost
exclusively in mystical theology, burying the result under several layers of
impenetrable Hegelian jargon (upside down or the 'right way up'), further aggravating the situation by the disdain they show for the
material
language of
ordinary life --, certain principles of which are partly expressed in
FL.

[These allegations have been substantiated in other Essays published at this site, and will be given a more
comprehensive analysis in Essay Twelve Parts
One to Seven (summary
here). It is worth
emphasising that the word "non-sense" is being used here in a special way, which
is explained here.]

However, the disguised nature of the
sort of non-sense expressed by a typical DM-sentence does not affect the present
point. Disguised or not, if it isn't possible to explain the sense of a single
DM-thesis (as these Essays have shown, and as DM-theorists themselves
have (implicitly) confirmed by their failure to do just that over the last 140+ years), it isn't possible to
think
their content either -- since they have none.

In that case -- trivial examples to one
side again --, it isn't possible to act upon a single DM-thesis.35a

This means that any sentence
token substitutable for "p" in S1 has to make sense
independently of
the
immediate context of utterance if it is to form the content of a legitimate
thought.

S1: NN thought that p.

Hence, S2a (or whatever finally replaces "p")
doesn't acquire a sense just
because it is prefixed with the sentential operator: "NN thought that…."36

S2a: The speed mice
inconsiderable sunset the colour red was twice acidic, but not Tarquin on
between three o'clock recidivist it squared less before, if grinder.

On the contrary, the use of "NN thought
that...." is only legitimate if what follows it makes sense
independently of that prefix.

Consider these examples:

S1: NN thought that p.

S2: NN thought that the speed
mice inconsiderable sunset the colour red was twice acidic, but not Tarquin on
between three o'clock recidivist it squared less before, if grinder.

S3: NN thought that Being is identical with but
at the same time different from Nothing, the contradiction
resolved in Becoming.

S3a: Being is identical with but
at the same time different from Nothing, the contradiction
resolved in Becoming.

So, despite claims to the contrary,
metaphysicians and religious mystics can't think the truth (nor
can they even think the falsehood) of anything they say (in this area), either.

[As we will see in Essay Twelve
Part One, sentences
like S3a can't be made sense of, no matter what is done with or to them.]

Naturally, this helps account for
the total uselessness of doctrines like these, and hence why they appeal to those in power
-- or, at least, to their ideologues. That is plainly because a
'profound-looking' metaphysical thesis is more likely to convince a wealthy
patron (and/or assorted toadying/uncritical on-lookers) that the one who concocted that
'profound-looking' metaphysical thesis has hit on
something very 'deep', especially if
no one appears to understand it.

This logical defect applies equally well to
the sorts of things DM-theorists often try to assert, which naturally means that if what they say
can't be thought (in the sense indicated above), then it can have no
practical consequences (other than negative), nor can it form the basis of any sane course of
action -- that is, no more than it would be the case if someone uttered the following sentences and
imagined they meant something by them (other than, perhaps, an intention to
confuse or startle, etc.), or expected others to act upon them:

S4: Make sure that the speed mice
inconsiderable sunset of the colour red is twice acidic, or the scabs will break
through the picket line.

S5: Don't forget that the
speed mice inconsiderable sunset of the colour red is twice acidic, so we must
organise a march next week.

S6: The fact that the speed mice
inconsiderable sunset of the colour red is twice acidic means that we shall have
to widen the dispute.

S7: Being is at the same time
identical with but different from Nothing, the contradiction resolved by
Becoming, so the latest pay offer is unacceptable.

S8: Motion without matter is
unthinkable, so you'd better print more strike leaflets.

S9: Change is the result of
internal contradictions, so don't forget to turn up on time for the paper sale.

Of course, S4-S6 are obviously malformed/ridiculous, but
they have been quoted to make this point clear. No one supposes that
dialectical propositions/instructions are quite so syntactically-challenged as
these (on that see, for example,
here), but they fall apart
alarmingly quickly for other reasons (as these Essays have shown). [Another good
example can be found
here.]

However, as S7-S9 also demonstrate,
DM-theses can't form a coherent basis for action. [Sceptical readers can insert their
own favoured DM-thesis (notan HM-thesis!) into any of S7-S9; the result, I predict, will not be
much
different. If anyone thinks otherwise, please
e-mail me with your best shot!]37a

It could be objected that this completely
misrepresents dialectical thinking. Marxists do not reason along the above lines,
nor on anything remotely like it. Perhaps not, but until we are given a clear
example of the practical use of a single DM-thesis, they will have to do.37b

So, when it is claimed that ideas specific
to DM have actually formed the basis of revolutionary practice it is
reasonable to expect some sort of explanation as to how this is even possible --
which explanation must advance beyond the usual hand waving, diversionary
tactics and bluster --, especially
when no one seems to be able to say with any clarity what a
single DM-doctrine actually amounts
to.

Indeed, and because of this, it is equally reasonable to suppose that DM could
only ever have succeeded in clouding the issues -- hindering
revolutionaries in their attempt to develop clarity --, and further that this
could only have helped initiate a series of
serious tactical blunders and pointless time-wasting arguments, just as
this theory
should be expected to aggravate sectarian in-fighting and petty point-scoring.
On top of this, this theory should be expected to help 'excuse' post hoc
rationalisations of regressive and/or opportunistic policies, which would be impossible to justify otherwise (indeed,
as we will
soon see).38

Of course, this isn't the only reason for
DIM's spectacular record of failure over the last 140+ years -- a
record un-rivalled by any other majorpolitical creed in recent human history
(other than perhaps Fascism).
But, it is one of the reasons.

Without doubt, this truly appalling record has much more to do with the
general nature of capitalist society, the fragmented and uneven state of the
working-class -- when that is set against a relatively better organised, and
ideologically more coherent ruling-class --, among other things.

However, the
opposite idea -- that dialectics (which supposedly constitutes the theoretical core of Marxism)
has had nothing whatsoever to do with this long and sorry record -- isbizarre in the
extreme. [More on that in Essay Ten
Part One.]

In
fact, we can
only absolve this Hermetic 'theory' of all blame if we
concede that it has had no subjective impact whatsoever
on previous generations of revolutionaries, and has never been used by them at
any time in the entire history of Marxism.39

Oddly
enough, as a
Leninist myself, I find this 'objection' remarkably easy to answer:
the Bolsheviks were successful because
they could not, and did not use dialectics
(either in its DM- or in its MD-form)
in their interface with the Russian masses. To be sure, this
is a controversial claim --
but that is only because no one has thought to controvert the traditional
picture before.

In fact,
the material counterweight provided by working class soviets prevented
the Bolsheviks from employing
this useless theory. Had they tried
to propagandise/organise Russian workers with slogans such as: "Being is
identical with but at the same time different from Nothing...", "The
whole is greater than the sum of the parts...", or "Matter without motion is
unthinkable" (and the
like), they'd have been regarded as complete lunatics, and rightly so.

On the other hand, they could
and did use ideas drawn from
HM to help organise the
revolution.

[All this was covered in detail
Part One of this Essay. The
difference between HM and DM is explained
here.]

And it is little use arguing that dialectical
concepts were used 'implicitly' (or that they 'informed' the tactics that Lenin
and his party adopted, somehow operating 'behind the scenes'). As we will see
below, since dialectical concepts can
be employed to justify anything at all and its opposite (being inherently and proudly
contradictory), had they been employed, they could only have been used
subjectively, since there is no objective way to tell these incompatible
applications apart.

Anyone who
takes exception to the above will need to show precisely how Lenin and
the Bolsheviks explicitly used dialectical-concepts --, as opposed to their
actual employment of HM-concepts (the latter having been based on a concrete class analysis of events
as they unfolded in that fateful year, and on decades of experience relating to the working class) -- in 1917.They will thus need to produce documentary evidence
of the Bolshevik's actual use of dialectical ideas/theses, and then show how they could possibly
have been of any practical benefit/use to workers in revolutionary struggle --, or
even how they could have helped the Bolsheviks comprehend what was going on and
how to intervene successfully.

"The
gist of [Bukharin's] theoretical mistake in this case is
substitution of eclecticism for the dialectical interplay of
politics and economics (which we find in Marxism). His theoretical
attitude is: 'on the one hand, and on the other',
'the one and the other'. That is
eclecticism. Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of
relationships in their concrete development but not a patchwork of
bits and pieces. I have shown this to be so on the example of
politics and economics....

"The reader will see that Bukharin's example was meant to
give me a popular explanation of the harm of one-track thinking. I
accept it with gratitude, and in the one-good
turn-deserves-another spirit offer a popular explanation of the
difference between dialectics and eclecticism.

"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass cylinder and a drinking
vessel. But there are more than these two properties, qualities or
facets to it; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite
number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the
rest of the world. A tumbler is a heavy object which can be used
as a missile; it can serve as a paper weight, a receptacle for a
captive butterfly, or a valuable object with an artistic engraving
or design, and this has nothing at all to do with whether or not
it can be used for drinking, is made of glass, is cylindrical or
not quite, and so on and so forth.

"Moreover, if I needed a tumbler just now for drinking, it would
not in the least matter how cylindrical it was, and whether it was
actually made of glass; what would matter though would be whether
it had any holes in the bottom, or anything that would cut my lips
when I drank, etc. But if I did not need a tumbler for drinking
but for a purpose that could be served by any glass cylinder, a
tumbler with a cracked bottom or without one at all would do just
as well, etc.

"Formal logic, which is as far as schools go (and should go,
with suitable abridgements for the lower forms), deals with formal
definitions, draws on what is most common, or glaring, and stops
there. When two or more different definitions are taken and
combined at random (a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel), the
result is an eclectic definition which is indicative of different
facets of the object, and nothing more.

"Dialectical logic demands that we should go further. Firstly,
if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at
and examine all its facets, its connections and
'mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to
achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a
safeguard against mistakes and rigidity. Secondly, dialectical
logic requires that an object should be taken in development, in
change, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts
it). This is not immediately obvious in respect of such an object
as a tumbler, but it, too, is in flux, and this holds especially
true for its purpose, use and connection with the
surrounding world. Thirdly, a full 'definition' of an
object must include the whole of human experience, both as a
criterion of truth and a practical indicator of its connection
with human wants. Fourthly, dialectical logic holds that
'truth is always concrete, never abstract', as the
late Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel....

"I have not, of course, run through the whole notion of
dialectical logic, but what I have said will do for the present. I
think we can return from the tumbler to the trade unions and
Trotsky's platform....

"Why is Bukharin's reasoning no more than inert and empty
eclecticism? It is because he does not even try to make an
independent analysis, from his own standpoint, either of the whole
course of the current controversy (as Marxism, that is,
dialectical logic, unconditionally demands) or of the whole
approach to the question, the whole presentation -- the whole
trend of the presentation, if you will -- of the question at
the present time and in these concrete circumstances. You do not
see Bukharin doing that at all! His approach is one of pure
abstraction: he makes no attempt at concrete study, and takes bits
and pieces from Zinoviev and Trotsky. That is eclecticism." [Lenin
(1921), pp.90-93. Italic emphases in the original. Quotations marks
altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]

It could be argued that
this is a classic example of dialectical thought in action, and one which not
only allowed Lenin to transcend the hasty conclusions arrived at by Bukharin and Trotsky, but
also to form a clear, concrete political analysis of situations as they arose -- and
then decide how to move the revolution forward.

However, as we have seen in
Essay Ten Part One, it is
in fact quite impossible to put Lenin's strategy into practise, just as there is
no evidence that he ever did so himself (in 1917, or even in 1921, when the
above was written). [The reader is directed to the above Essay for more
details.]

Now, I have trawled through
the available minutes and decrees of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik
Party (from August 1917 to February 1918), and have failed to find a
single DM-thesis -- let alone one drawn from MD
--
put to any use, or even alluded to in passing!
[Bone (1974).] To be sure, it is always possible
I might have missed something, but even if I have, this
Hermetic creed hardly forms
a prominent part of the day-to-day discussions between active revolutionaries.

Added later: I have now gone though the available documents
line by line twice -- still no sign of this
'centrally important' theory!

In fact, it is
conspicuous by its absence.

Hence, the available
evidence confirms the claims made above: active revolutionaries made no use
of this 'theory', plainly because it is impossible to put a single DM-thesis into practice.

Added later still: I have now checked
the Theses, Resolutions And Manifestos Of The First Four Congresses Of The
Third International [Holt and Holland (1983)], and the only visible sign of
dialectics amounts to a couple of dozen occurrences of the word "contradiction"
(employed in
relation to the unfolding crises in capitalism (etc.)) in over 400 pages. No other examples of
dialectical jargon appear in the entire volume. Even then,
"contradiction" isn't used to explain anything, nor does it seem to do any
theoretical or practical work
(indeed, as noted elsewhere, this word is used simply because it is part of a
well-established tradition,
and nothing more). Furthermore, most of the
occurrences of this word are down to
Zinoviev;
as far as I can tell, Lenin doesn't use the term anywhere in the book.

Moreover, in Trotsky's The
Third International After Lenin [Trotsky (1974)], dialectics is mentioned
only fourteen times in nearly 300 pages, and then only in passing. This theory does no
work there either.

And it is even less use someone requiring of
me to produce proof that Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not use dialectical ideas,
since there is no written
evidence that he/they did, as the above indicates. In which case, the contrary
conclusion (that DM/MD weren't actually used) goes by default.

That is in addition to the fact that it has
been
shown (above, and in Essay
Nine Part One) that it isn't possible
to apply DM-concepts -- they have no practical
applications, other than negative, as we will see in the
next section. After all, even Lenin got into a serious
muddle when he tried to
play around with such ideas, let alone when he attempted to
apply them; his "all round" consideration of the facts ("mediacies") would have
locked him into a permanent
state of indecision. So, it is
little wonder he avoided using this theory at such an important juncture.

As we
will soon find out, too, dialectical concepts
can be made to 'justify' anything you like (no matter how contradictory that
"anything you like" might otherwise appear to be; in fact the more
contradictory it is, the more 'dialectical' it seems to be!). Indeed, it can be, and has been used to rationalise any course of action, and its
opposite (often this trick is performed by the very same dialectician, in the same
article, or even in the same speech!), including policies that are
both counter-revolutionary and anti-Marxist.

[Some have argued
in response to the above claim that other theories can be, and have been used in this way -- i.e., one
individual might use a theory to prove one thing and then another theorist
might use it
to prove the
opposite. Maybe so, but only DM (or,
perhaps, Zen Buddhism) has been
usedby the very same individual to
rationalise one course of action/thesis and its opposite, sometimes on the same
page, or even in the same paragraph/sentence/speech! Moreover, no other theory is accepted by
revolutionary cadres, and so no other theory is so well placed to 'win' them to anything their 'leaders'
consider expedient.]

In fact, shortly after the
revolution many younger comrades (and Russian scientists) began to argue at
length that all of Philosophy (and not just dialectics) is part of
ruling-class ideology (which is a crude version of my own thesis!). It
wasn't until the
Deborinites
won a factional battle in 1925/26 that this trend was defeated (and that was
clearly engineered to help pave the way for the further destruction of the gains
of October 1917). [More about that later.]

Indeed, Lenin's use of
'dialectical logic' (in the passage
quoted above), took
place in 1921, when the revolution was beginning to go backward. This is in line
with what was said earlier:
this theory is only of real use in times of defeat or set-back. It also conforms
to other things that have been alleged in this Essay: that dialectics is an
ideal tool for use in faction fights, since its nebulous theses can be marshalled in
support of anything at all, and its opposite.

So, 1917 can't be chalked-up as a success for
this strain of
Hermetic Mysticism.

However, we will soon see that the
disintegration and destruction of the results of 1917 can, indeed, be attributed partly to
this 'theory'.

I will be devoting an entire Essay to this
topic, but for present purposes we need merely sum up the results so far:

In
Part One it was
shown that ideas exclusive to DM can't be used to educate, propagandise or
agitate the working-class. Moreover, dialectics can't even represent a
generalisation of the experience of the Revolutionary Party; that is because
not one single DM-fan understands this theory -- or if they do, they have kept
that fact well hidden for over one hundred and forty years. Worse still, there
is no evidence that revolutionaries have used this 'theory' in
their practical interface with the working-class. Indeed, because of its
incoherence, it can't be so used.

On the contrary, the
shadowy history
of this theory reveals where DM-concepts originated: not from the experience of the
party, nor from that of the class, but from a tradition possessed of excellent
ruling-class credentials,
a tradition that has promoted an Ideal view of reality for at least
two-and-a-half millennia -- that is, a view of a
hidden world
that supposedly underlies material
appearances, and which is accessible to
thought alone.

In this Part of Essay Nine, it has been argued
that ideas unique to DM can have no practical impact other than negative,
since they are devoid of sense and are based on divisive concepts appropriated
from boss-class ideologues. Not only does this theory fail to relate to workers' experience,
it fails to relate to anyone's experience, or even experience anyone could
conceivably have. Because of this it has to be imposed
on workers,
'against the materialist grain', as it
were.

In stark contrast, HM not only can, it does have practical import.
It represents
the generalisation and systematisation of workers' (indeed, humanity's) collective
experience and understanding -- as well as that of the party.

Nevertheless, in the analysis
given so far, the connection between DM and substitutionism has been left somewhat
vague and unclear.

Substitutionist ideas in general
(in this context) originate from the belief that workers are
incapable of organising themselves (that is, over and above developing merely a
'trade union
form of consciousness', or the like) -- or they are too few/too weak to do this -- and thus
that they are incapable of bringing about (successful) revolutionary change.

[It is now clear from Lars Lih's work that
Lenin himself didn't believe this; but the vast majority of those claiming to be
Leninists since, have (Lih (2005, 2010)).]

Of course, substitutionism isn't itself an
expression of free-floating ideas, nor is it monolithic. It springs from
various class ideologies and material interests, but it only becomes problematic
at certain historical junctures. It largely gains and maintains its grip (when it does)
because of the fragmented and uneven nature of the working-class --, which conditions
it parasites, prolongs or exacerbates.
Nevertheless, as is well-known, substitutionist ideas manifest themselves in the
general belief that workers actually need someone, or some other group to lead them (both
theoretically and practically), and that they are incapable (for whatever
reason) of leading their own political struggle and thus of transforming society through their own activity, etc., etc. [More on this in
Essay Nine Part One.]40

To be sure, this isn't the whole story, and
it is possible to link substitutionist ideas to other reactionary beliefs and
theories, not just these. That won't be attempted here.

Among revolutionaries (at such times), the
ideological justification for substitutionism can assume many forms, nurturing
perhaps the belief that 'objective' factors prevent workers themselves from
creating a classless society, or from prosecuting the struggle to attain it. It
also motivates the belief that workers are incapable of
comprehending their own interests, that they have been befuddled by
'commonsense' and 'formal thinking', or that they have been "bought off" by imperialist "super-profits",
etc.

However, more specifically in connection with the
main theme of this
Essay,
a commitment to DM encourages
the idea that workers can't grasp the fundamental 'scientific' and/or
'philosophical' principles that underlie human history or, indeed, the rest of
the universe. That being the case, they will, of course, need someone else to do this, or to understand that, for them.40a

This belief now transforms Marxists (who are inclined in the above
directions) into latter-day prophets, 'teachers of the masses', and hence superior human beings -- which
transformation helps explain the
personality cults and the elitist comments one
often hears from such individuals -- such as "workerism", "economism",
"banal commonsense".41

Nevertheless, this doesn't exhaust the
possibilities. As it turns out, these other considerations are connected
with the familiar claim appropriated from Traditional Philosophy that
there is a fundamental distinction between
"appearance" and "reality".

It is no accident then that the above
distinction
has traditionally been associated with a haughty disdain
for ordinary language and common experience (as we will see in Essay Twelve,
summary here). Thus, if reality is
in fact different from
the way it seems -- indeed, its very opposite -- then workers, who, according to this
approach, view
nature and society superficially, based on 'commonsense', clearly require someone
not only to unmask
nature's secrets for them, but lead their thinking and act as their brains.
Indeed, if the vernacular is inadequate in this regard
(that is, if it can't be trusted "beyond certain limits"), then
it needs to be 'augmented' by, or even replaced with, terminology that can. Or, at the very least, it requires supplementation
with Hegelian, 'philosophical' jargon. Since 'commonsense' and ordinary language are inter-linked
(on this view), and both are connected with communal life, this 'replacement language' must be based on
what are taken to be philosophically- and
scientifically-sound
representational principles -- but not on the
vernacular, which is governed by 'unreliable' and 'crude' working class, communicational or
communitarian principles.42

Moreover, and because of this, the
impenetrable jargon
employed by those who have developed this
new 'revolutionary' theory must assist in the initiation of any acolyte
it manages to attract into its inner mysteries, which will in the end reveal (to those not lost in the
mists of 'commonsense') nature's underlying "essence", uncovering secrets that lie way beyond the
reach of 'formal consciousness'.

Figure Six: Dialectician
Looking For 'Underlying Essences'

Hence, according to this way of seeing
things, workers require teachers who are
prepared to substitute into their heads a new set of ideas -- a set of
doctrines that tell them of a hidden world underlying 'appearances', accessible
by thought alone (which is why these ideas have to be introduced to workers theoretically) -- in place of the socially-, and
materially-grounded beliefs they already have. Alas, this new set of ideas
has been derived from the
class enemy,and containsconcepts drawn from the
very worst forms of Mystical Idealism.42a

Workers' thinking must therefore be up-ended,
and their materialist ideas replaced with these inverted, Idealist concepts. The
erstwhile subjects of history (i.e., revolutionary workers) must therefore become the passive
objects of theory. They
must be intellectually pacified by being theoretically knocked off their feet.

[Much of the background to the above,
seemingly dogmatic assertions can be found in
Part One of this Essay.]

At this point, it is worth stressing that it is not
being maintained here that revolutionaries should adopt a romantic or naïve view
of either workers or their ideas --, i.e., that their thoughts aren't
fragmentary or inconsistent, that racist or sexist notions don't enter their heads, that they always and infallibly know how best to further
their own interests, that they have the requisite organisational structures
adequate to that end -- or even that they understand the nature and source of
their own oppression and exploitation, and so on.

[None of these conditions are cast in stone,
anyway!
How workers transform themselves in struggle (with or without the aid of the party)
is already well understood by Marxists, and needs no elaboration by me. Even so,
Essay Twelve Part Seven I aim to show why any successful intervention by
revolutionaries will have to be centred on the vernacular (but not on the
obscure jargon imported from the work of Hegel and other boss-class theorists) and
common understanding. Any who still think ordinary language is inadequate
in some way are encouraged to read
this and then
this, and then
think again. Or, failing that, contact the editors of the vast majority or
revolutionary papers on the planet, and tell them to stop using the
vernacular to communicate with workers!]

Neither is it part of the argument here that workers do
not need a revolutionary party drawn from their own ranks, which has established
deep links with workers (forged in struggle), and which has thus learnt from them.43

On the other hand, because HM represents a
generalisation of workers' experience, when it is introduced to them it
augmentswhat they already know. In that case, it doesn't need to be
substituted into their heads in place of their own ideas -- even though it might change many of these
for the better. As, noted in Essay Nine
Part One, because HM
meshes with workers' own experience, and speaks to their exploitation and
oppression, it is introduced to them from the 'inside', as it were.

Nevertheless, the only issue of immediate
concern here is the influence that DM-ideas have had on the attitude revolutionaries
adopt toward workers. Indeed, this concerns the connection
between DM
and the
petty-bourgeois, substitutionist mentality that appears to be endemic among
professional revolutionaries (because of their class position and their
fondness for this elitist,
boss-class
theory).

Hence, in relation to strategy and tactics, and with regard to the theoretical
understanding of the relationship between party and class, the question
posed in this section is whether ideas drawn from what are demonstrably
ruling-class sources, which reflect the priorities of that class (e.g., mystification,
esotericism, fragmentation, control,
arrogance, disdain), when adopted by revolutionaries may have
unsuspected, but inevitably substitutionist consequences.

In short, it is alleged that
dialectical concepts will, among other things, be used in order to rationalise
and justify substitutionism.

And that is precisely what we find.

[Indeed, in Essay Nine
Part One, it was
concluded that DM/MD is in fact the ideology of substitutionist
elements within Marxism.]

It could argued that many of the remarks aired in the first half of this
Essay are largely theoretical and abstract.
That isn't entirely true, but let us suppose it is. In that case, what is needed now are concrete examples
(drawn from the history
DIM) of the deleterious effects on revolutionaries of the use dialectical
concepts.43a

Fortunately, because of the
long-term
failure of DIM, these aren't too hard to find -- in fact,
it is rather surprising that no one has noticed them before (which in itself confirms
the narcoleptic effect Hegelian concepts
and a slavish adherence to tradition have
had on the minds of the
vast majority of
DM/MD-fans, and on those
who have studied the history of our movement).

In that case, what follows is, I think, the
very first study of its kind.

Four preliminary points however need to be
made:

(1) As noted in the
Preface to this Essay, the following sections are still in their infancy;
they will require far more
attention devoting to them before the conclusions I have drawn can be regarded as in any way definitive.
I will add more detail and evidence as my researches continue.

(2) However, the search for this evidence has
been hampered by the fact that every single Marxist history I have read (concerning the
periods I am about to analyse -- indeed, about any period in our
history!) fails even to consider whether or not MD/DM are
in any way to blame (in whole or in part) for
the defeats and disasters our side has suffered since the 1860s.

As far as I
can determine, the role this theory has played doesn't merit even so much as a
cursory mention in this respect!

Of course, that is in itself quite revealing, given the centrality
this theory is supposed to have assumed in everything that revolutionaries are
alleged to have said, thought and done -- according to what they themselves
tell us.

Why this universal, selective blindness?

The answer is pretty clear:
as Marx
suggested, blaming this theory in any way at all, directly or indirectly,
wholly or partly, for
the long-term failure of DIM would undermine the only
source of consolation available to dialectically-distracted comrades. Despite
what we are constantly told, it is
also why this theory has never been tested
in practice -- in the sense that practice has been allowed to deliver its
unambiguous
and unwelcome verdict.

(3) Any Stalinists and/or Maoists who
disagree with my assessment of their respective traditions below are
encouraged to shelve
whatever knee-jerk reactions they might have to what the read until the end of this
main section, by which time they should see the
point of it all.

[As for fellow Trotskyists, they will already have
switched off, anyway! Experience has taught me that they are among the most
closed-minded of dialecticians, often warning others not to read these Essays for
fear that the pristine purity of their ideas might be 'tainted' as a result --
often reacting just like
Trotsky did to those in the US-SWP back in the 1930s who rejected this
theory. Literally scores
of
examples of this rather odd phenomenon can be found at
RevLeft and other sites on the
internet where I have tried to engage them in debate.]

(4) Once again, it is worth reminding readers
that my argument isn't the following: DM has been derived from boss-class
concepts, therefore it is false. On the contrary, my argument is: DM makes no
sense, in which case it is impossible for anyone to decide if it is true or
false -- so no wonder it has served us so badly for over a century. Moreover,
because (a)
DM is non-sensical and
incoherent, and because of (b) its origin in traditional ruling-class thought,
it can have no positive practical applications -- only negative -- on a movement
that is supposed to be aimed at transforming, and then terminating, class society.

In the material presented below, I have
published dozens of lengthy passages from dialecticians
aimed at showing how deep Hegelian
concepts have penetrated into our movement, exposing the pernicious effect they have
had on every aspect of revolutionary theory and practice.

Apologies must be offered in advance for
this, but there is no way that the above objectives can be achieved
otherwise. Long
experience has taught me that dialecticians tend to deny allegations
they do not like unless they are backed-up by chapter and verse. Even then, with passages from
Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, or Mao staring them in the face, many of them remain locked in 'deny-everything-mode'.
[Excellent recent examples of this phenomenon can be found
here.]

There are other examples I could have
chosen (indeed, I might consider including them here at a later date,
perhaps in another Appendix
to this Essay), but given the fact that
these three cover periods when workers (and others) were
entering into what is arguably one of the biggest, if not the biggest --
certainly the most important -- revolutionary wave in human history
to date, and
given the further fact that all this energy was squandered by the
activities of Dialectical Marxists, these should be enough to prove to
all but the most rabidly partisan, or the most deeply dialectically doped of comrades, that
MD/DM
are among the very worst theories ever to have colonised the human brain.

When the working class
was ready to move, Dialectical Marxists screwed up catastrophically.

DM/MD
were used by the Stalinised Bolshevik Party (after Lenin's death) to 'justify'
the imposition of an undemocratic (if not openly anti-democratic and
terror-based) structure on both the Communist Party and the population of
former Soviet Union (fSU)
-- and later on Eastern Europe, China, North
Korea, Cuba, and elsewhere.

The catastrophic effect of these moves hardly needs
underlining.

This new and vicious form of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' was justified by Stalin on the grounds that
since Marxist theory holds that everything is 'contradictory', increasingly centralised control
by the party was compatible with greater democratic freedom! The "withering-away of the state" was in
fact confirmed by moves in the opposite direction: the ever-growing concentration
of power at the centre. So,
and paradoxically, less democracy was in fact more
democracy!

[As we will discover, such moves have been echoed
in practically every Marxist Tendency since, right won to the current crisis in
the UK-SWP.]

Indeed, this very 'contradiction' illustrated the truth of dialectics!

"The flowering of cultures that are national in form and
socialist in content under the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country
for the purpose of merging them into one common socialist (both in form
and content) culture, with one common language, when the proletariat is
victorious all over the world and when socialism becomes the way of life -- it
is just this that constitutes the dialectics of the Leninist presentation of
the question of national culture.

"It may be said that such a
presentation of the question is 'contradictory.' But is there not the same
'contradictoriness' in our presentation of the question of the state? We stand
for the withering away of the state. At the same time we stand for the
strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the mightiest and
strongest state power that has ever existed. The highest development of state
power with the object of preparing the conditions for the withering away of
state power -- such is the Marxist formula. Is this 'contradictory'? Yes, it is
'contradictory.' But this contradiction us bound up with life, and it fully
reflects Marx's dialectics." [Political
Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of the CPSU(B),
June 27, 1930. Bold emphasis alone added; quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]43a0

Less democracy is more democracy!

In addition, the various 'national cultures' in the fSU will flower under
'socialism' if they are merged in to one!

A contradiction?

No worries -- a little dialectics will soon sort that out!

Stalin went on to add this rather ominous note:

"Anyone who fails to understand this peculiar feature and
'contradiction' of our transition period, anyone who fails to understand
these dialectics of the historical processes, is dead as far as Marxism is
concerned.

"The misfortune of our deviators is that they do not
understand, and do not wish to understand, Marx's dialectics." [Ibid.
Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site.]

As many leading Bolsheviks were soon to find out, Stalin
wasn't
joking when he made these remarks.

Indeed, as noted above, this theory formed part of Stalin's 'justification' for
the Communist Party's line on the National Question, specifically linking these two issues in the
previous quotation:

"Lenin sometimes depicted the thesis on national
self-determination in the guise of the simple formula: 'disunion for union'.
Think of it -- disunion for union. It even sounds like a paradox. And yet,
this 'contradictory' formula reflects that living truth of Marx's dialectics
which enables the Bolsheviks to capture the most impregnable fortresses in the
sphere of the national question." [Ibid.
Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site.]

This allowed Stalin to claim that the merging of all national
cultures (in the fSU) into one was at the same time to show respect
for, and
thus preserve, their differences! One thing we can be sure about: the
Chechens and the
Cossacks
certainly
appreciated Stalin's 'dialectical' solution to the national question.

"The essence of Trotskyism is, lastly, denial of the
necessity for iron discipline in the Party, recognition of freedom for factional
groupings in the Party, recognition of the need to form a Trotskyist party.
According to Trotskyism, the CPSU(B) must be not a single, united militant
party, but a collection of groups and factions, each with its own centre, its
own discipline, its own press, and so forth. What does this mean? It means
proclaiming freedom for political factions in the Party. It means that freedom
for political groupings in the Party must be followed by freedom for political
parties in the country, i.e., bourgeois democracy. Consequently, we have here
recognition of freedom for factional groupings in the Party right up to
permitting political parties in the land of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
disguised by phrases about 'inner-party democracy', about 'improving the regime'
in the Party. That freedom for factional squabbling of groups of intellectuals
is not inner-party democracy, that the widely-developed self-criticism conducted
by the Party and the colossal activity of the mass of the Party membership is
real and genuine inner-party democracy -- Trotskyism can't understand." [Ibid.
Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]

Greater democracy from less democracy; all eminently
contradictory, all quintessentially 'dialectical'.

All this follows, of course, from the Hegelian idea that
conformity to law is the very essence of freedom, as Lenin noted:

"To begin with what is the simplest, most
ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John
is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the
individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the
individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists
only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in
the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or
another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the
essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the
individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal,
etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with
other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc.
Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity,
of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and
the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we
disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence
from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other…." [Lenin (1961),
p.359. Italic emphases in the original;
bold emphases added.]

As Engels also pointed out:

"This second definition of freedom, which quite unceremoniously gives a
knock-out blow to the first one, is again nothing but an extreme vulgarisation
of the Hegelian conception. Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation
between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity (die
Einsicht in die Notwendigheit).

"'Necessity is blind only in so far as it is
not understood[begriffen].' [Engels is
here quoting Hegel (1975),
p.209, §147
-- RL.]

"Freedom
does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the
knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically
making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the
laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental
existence of men themselves -- two classes of laws which we can separate from
each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of the will
therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the
subject. Therefore the freer a man's judgment is in relation to a
definite question, the greater is the necessity with which the content
of this judgment will be determined; while the uncertainty, founded on
ignorance, which seems to make an arbitrary choice among many different and
conflicting possible decisions, shows precisely by this that it is not free,
that it is controlled by the very object it should itself control. Freedom
therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a
control founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore necessarily a
product of historical development.

"The first men who separated themselves from the animal kingdom were in all
essentials as unfree as the animals themselves, but each step forward in the
field of culture was a step towards freedom.... [F]or the first time there
can be talk of real human freedom, of an existence in harmony with the laws of
nature that have become known." [Engels (1976),
pp.144-45. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform to
the conventions adopted at this site.]

I will be discussing these ideas -- which are in fact reminiscent
of ancient New
Testament and
Pauline
notions (also to be found in
Rousseau) -- in Essay Three Part Five. Suffice it to say here that the
'contradiction' between freedom and necessity was 'solved' by Engels and Lenin
in the same basic way that Christians 'solve' scientific problems in the Bible
-- they either (a) invent a miracle or (b) they bury the problem in the 'Divine
Mystery'. DM-theorists 'solve' this problem by waving the word
"dialectics" at it, thus burying it in the mysteries of
DL. [In short,
they Nixon it.]

Be this as it may, this 'contradiction' 'justified' the
Stalinised
argument that greater freedom was to be found in the imposition of an undemocratic and
terror based legal structure on the working class of the fSU (and elsewhere).
[Although they wouldn't put this point quite like that!]

[The background to this way of looking at 'freedom' can be found
in Isaiah
Berlin's classic essay
Two Concepts of Liberty -- i.e., Berlin (2002), pp.166-217. I hasten
to add that I do not agree with everything Berlin says, but this work is still
unmatched in the clarity it brings to this issue.]

To be sure, this was a gross distortion of what Engels and Lenin
might have meant, but that's Diabolical Logic for you -- it can be (and was here) used to
rationalise anything Stalin and his henchmen liked, and its opposite.

Indeed, by using this universal solvent (DL), it became possible to 'justify' the idea that socialism could be built in one country, by, among other things, the dubious invention of
"internal" versus "external" contradictions, later
supported by
the further invention of "principal" and
"secondary" contradictions, along with the highly convenient
idea that some contradictions were, while some were not, "antagonistic".

Hence,
the obvious class differences that remained, or which soon emerged in the fSU were either
"non-existent" or were, despite 'appearances' to the contrary, "harmonious". The real enemies
(i.e., the source of all those nasty, "principal" (or perhaps even
"antagonistic") contradictions) were the
external, imperialist powers.43a00

This analysis 'allowed'
STDs to argue that socialism could be built in one country because
it was now possible to define the
intrinsic nature
of the fSU by means of its internal relations, not the relations it
held with the rest of the Capitalist world. We saw this was a consequence of
one
interpretation of the "unity and interpenetration of opposites"
(which was, oddly enough, an interpretation
promoted by STDs themselves). Since
DM can be used in any which way a particular dialectician pleases, we also saw
that this approach will only work if, in this case, the fSU
is isolated from its surroundings, and the relations it holds with the rest of
the world are treated as merely 'external'. On the other hand, if we look at
capitalism from a different 'dialectical' angle, and view the world economy as a
system in its own right, the relationship between the fSU and the capitalist
world can be
re-classified as 'internal' [This is indeed the line that Trotsky and his followers took.]

All this is part of the
'dialectical
equivocation' we met
in Essays Eight
Part
One and Eleven Part
Two between 'external' and 'internal' contradictions; between what I have
called the 'geometric or spatial interpretation' of the "unity and
interpenetration of opposites", and the 'logical' version. What looks 'external'
on one view of this theory is 'internal' from another, and vice versa.

The super-dialectical 'flexibility' built into
this theory -- since neither Hegel, Marx, Engels, Plekhanov nor Lenin seem to have
known anything about 'external contradictions' (the term itself seems to be
non-viable,
anyway) --, 'allowed' this convenient distinction to be used to defend any idea whatsoever,
and its opposite, put to 'good use' here by the Stalinists to defend this
revised view of the nature of the fSU and what was possible to build within its
now sealed borders.

This then 'allowed' STDs to
claim that the actions of the imperialist powers, for example, constituted one set
of 'external contradictions'
in relation to the fSU itself, and hence to conclude that the real nature of the
fSU could be defined
internally, based on its own internal, but 'non-antagonistic' contradictions.
This in turn 'enabled' them to argue (or, rather, it 'allowed' them to
rationalise a conclusion already arrived at for hard-headed political reasons -- on
that, see here) that socialism
could be built in one country.

Clearly, this hyper-plastic theory can be bent
into any shape that proves either convenient or expedient.

As Stalin argued:

"Our
country exhibits two groups of contradictions. One group consists of the
internal contradictions that exist between the proletariat and the peasantry....
The other group consists of the external contradictions that exist between our
country, as the land of socialism, and all the other countries, as lands of
capitalism....

"Anyone
who confuses the first group of contradictions, which can be overcome entirely
by the efforts of one country, with the second group of contradictions, the
solution of which requires the efforts of the proletarians of several countries,
commits a gross error against Leninism. He is either a muddle-head or an
incorrigible opportunist." [Stalin
(1976c), pp.210-11. Bold emphasis added.]

"What is
meant by the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country?

"It
means the possibility of solving the contradictions between the proletariat and
the peasantry by means of the internal forces of our country, the possibility of
the proletariat seizing power and using that power to build a complete socialist
society in our country, with the sympathy and the support of the
proletarians of other countries, but without the preliminary victory of the
proletarian revolution in other countries.

"Without,
such a possibility, building socialism is building without prospects, building
without being sure that socialism will be completely built. It is no use
engaging in building socialism without being sure that we can build it
completely, without being sure that the technical backwardness of our country is
not an insuperable obstacle to the building of a complete socialist society. To
deny such a possibility means disbelief in the cause of building socialism,
departure from Leninism.

"What is
meant by the impossibility of the complete, final victory of socialism in one
country without the victory of the revolution in other countries?

"It means
the impossibility of having a full guarantee against intervention, and
consequently against the restoration of the bourgeois order, without the victory
of the revolution in at least a number of countries. To deny this indisputable
thesis means departure from internationalism, departure from Leninism...." [Ibid.,
pp.212-13. Bold emphases added.]43a1

[How 'contradictions' can be "overcome" is, of
course, a deep mystery which we will have to pass over in silence. I will return
to this passage along with others like it, and consider them in more detail as
this Essay unfolds.]

Nevertheless, as Tom Weston has shown in a recent article
in Science &
Society
[Weston (2008)], the distinction between "antagonistic" and "non-antagonistic
contradictions" [henceforth, ACs and NACs,
respectively] can't be attributed to Lenin, as many have supposed:

"Antagonism and contradiction are not at all the same
thing. In socialism, the first will disappear, but the latter will remain."
[Lenin, quoted in Weston (2008), p.433. This was in fact a marginal note
Lenin wrote in his copy of a book by Bukharin!]

Weston goes on to say:

"This note has often been treated as evidence that Lenin
accepted or even invented the NAC concept (e.g.,
Mitin and Mao), but it surely
does not show this. Like Marx, Lenin distinguished contradiction from
antagonism, and this raises a philosophical question about the relation between
the two. Lenin did not answer this question, however, and he did not claim that
antagonism is a special kind of contradiction." [Weston (2008), p.433.]

[Incidentally, Weston, who knows his logic (after all, he
teaches the
subject!), is remarkably accommodating here. For example, he nowhere asks
why 'dialectical contradictions' are contradictions to begin with. As we
have seen (in Essay Five, Eight
Part One, Eight Part Two (here,
here and
here),
Essay Eight Part Three, and Essay
Eleven Part One),
little sense can be made of the term "dialectical contradiction". Nor does
Weston ask how Lenin could possibly have known that "antagonism" and
"contradiction" either are or aren't the same, or that one will disappear under socialism
while the other won't. (The answer is, of course, that Lenin couldn't possibly
have known this -- unless he was imposing these ideas on nature and society,
contrary to what dialecticians tell us they
never do.) It also raises the
question, which Weston doesn't I think answer: "Well, what is the difference
between antagonism and contradiction?"]

Weston then goes on to point out that the idea that there are NACs and
ACs in nature and society began to take shape in the work of
Bukharin
and Deborin,
but the first explicit appearance of either notion was in 1930, in an article
that appeared in the Party's theoretical journal Bol'shevik, written by
Nicolai Karev (who was later to play a key role in
Boris
Hessen's demise):

"The theme of this article was a critique of Bukharin's
and
Alexandr Bogdanov's conceptions of contradiction and equilibrium. As part of
his argument that antagonism of classes is not analogous to antagonism of
physical forces acting in different directions, Karev gave the following
definition: 'Antagonism is in general that type of contradiction in which the
opposite sides have become completely isolated from one another and externally
confront one another'". [Ibid., p.440. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]

[As noted above, this new line, of
course, depends on the spatial view of the "unity and interpenetration of opposites"
(and cannot be made consistent with anything Hegel ever wrote -- upside down or
the 'right way up'), and has been peddled ever since by STDs.]

It is quite clear from what Weston tell us that these two
forms of 'contradiction' were introduced in order to rationalise the CPSU's claim
that (1) socialism could be built in one country, that (2) there was no class war in the
fSU, that
(3) workers and peasants
were neither oppressed nor exploited -- even if they still had conflicting interests
--
and also to (4) 'justify' the murderous
collectivisation of land and subsequent purges:

"From the 1930s, the most important application of the NAC
concept was the soviet policy toward the peasantry...." [Ibid., p.436.]

Production by peasants was based on privately owned
small-holdings, and there would naturally arise conflict between the peasantry
and the urban working class over the prices the former charged for their produce.
However:

"The Bolsheviks...considered the poor and middle peasants
and agricultural workers to be allies of the urban working class, forming a
'bond' which was the official basis of the soviet state." [Ibid., p.437.]

However, this was not so with respect to the "kulaks"
and the urban traders (the so-called "NEPmen"),
who were regarded as class enemies, whose ACs were soon 'resolved' by the
Bolsheviks -- that is, these groups were eradicated. "No man, no problem."
[Yes, I know
Stalin probably didn't say this!]:

"The...official view was that the contradiction of the
labouring classes versus the kulaks tend to become more intense, while the
contradictions inside the 'bond' tend to die out. Stalin wrote that inside the
'bond', there existed 'a struggle whose importance is out-weighed by...the
community of interests, and which should disappear in the future...when they
become working people of a classless society'.... Similar claims were made for
the contradictions between manual workers and the soviet 'intelligentsia'...."
[Ibid., p.437. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted
at this site.]43b

[STD = Stalinist Dialectician.]

Nevertheless, a couple of generations later and
we find that STDs were still promoting the same line. Here is Cornforth (also misusing
Lenin!):

"In general, social contradictions are
antagonistic when they involve conflicts of economic interest. In such cases one
group imposes its own interests on another, and one group suppresses another by
forcible methods. But when conflicts of economic interest are not involved,
there is no antagonism and therefore no need for the forcible suppression of any
group by any other. Once class antagonisms are done away with in socialist
society, all social questions can be settled by discussion and argument, by
criticism and self-criticism, by persuasion, conviction and agreement....

In which case, under 'socialism' strikes are
'obviously' unnecessary -- or, they just 'don't happen' -- hence, they shouldn't
happen; but,
when they do, they must be suppressed. And so they were suppressed with a level of violence rarely seen anywhere
else outside
of overtly fascist states. [On this, see Haynes (2002), and Kozlov (2002).]

Any attempt made by workers to rebel (e.g., Hungary 1956)
were blamed on "external forces",
or agents
from
outside the working class (a
familiar excuse used by
ruling classes
the world over to account for, and thus ignore or explain away the significance of
'social unrest' -- all caused, of course, by the ubiquitous "external agitator"),
i.e., in this case, the "imperialist powers", "fascists", or even
Tito (but not ordinary workers fighting for and on behalf of their own interests), once more.44

We will merely note, alongside Cornforth, the calm way that the
NACs in Hungary (in 1956) were resolved by Russian tanks
(i.e., using "discussion and argument...persuasion, conviction and agreement").

To be sure, and howsoever hard one tries, it is
difficult not to be "persuaded" by an armoured column.

Cornforth also tried to defend the idea that
socialism could be created in one country -- referring his readers
to Trotsky's counter-claim, which was allegedly based on "abstract" and fixed categories:

"After the proletarian revolution was successful
another scheme was propounded -- this time by Trotsky. 'You can't build
socialism in one country. Unless the revolution takes place in the advanced
capitalist countries, socialism can't come in Russia.' Lenin and Stalin showed
that this scheme, too, was false....

"In all these examples it will be seen that the
acceptance of some ready-made scheme, some abstract formula, means passivity,
support for capitalism, betrayal of the working class and of socialism. But the
dialectical approach which understands things in their concrete interconnections
and movement shows us how to forge ahead -- how to fight, what allies to draw
in. That is the inestimable value of the Marxist dialectical method to the
working class movement." [Ibid., pp.79-80.
Bold emphasis added.]

[Several other attempts made by
STDs and
MISTs to show that
Trotsky ignored or 'misused' the 'dialectic' can be found in Note 44.]

Which is odd in view of what Trotsky himself argued:

"Shachtman
obviously does not take into account the distinction between the abstract and
the concrete. Striving toward concreteness, our mind operates with
abstractions. Even 'this,' 'given,' 'concrete' dog is an abstraction because it
proceeds to change, for example, by dropping its tail the 'moment' we point a
finger at it. Concreteness is a relative concept and not an absolute one:
what is concrete in one case turns out to be abstract in another: that is,
insufficiently defined for a given purpose. In order to obtain a concept
'concrete' enough for a given need it is necessary to correlate several
abstractions into one -- just as in reproducing a segment of life upon the
screen, which is a picture in movement, it is necessary to combine a number of
still photographs.

"The
concrete is a combination of abstractions -- not an arbitrary or subjective
combination but one that corresponds to the laws of the movement of a given
phenomenon." [Trotsky (1971),
p.147. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]

Since the USSR is no more, and with the benefit of hindsight, one should rightly conclude that Cornforth
ought to have
remained loyal to Lenin's 'fixed' and 'abstract' scheme that the revolution
would have to spread, or die:

"The facts of history have proved to those
Russian patriots who will hear of nothing but the immediate interests of their
country conceived in the old style, that the transformation of our Russian
revolution into a socialist revolution, was not an adventure but a necessity
since there was no other choice; Anglo-French and American imperialism
will inevitably strangle the independence and freedom of Russia unless
the world-wide socialist revolution, world-wide Bolshevism, triumphs."
[Lenin, quoted from
here. Bold emphasis alone added.]

"We always staked our play on an international
revolution and this was unconditionally right... we always emphasised...the fact
that in one country it is impossible to accomplish such a work as a socialist
revolution." [Lenin, Sochineniia, 25, pp.473-74; quoted
from Cliff (1988),
pp.156-57. Bold emphasis added. Parts of this can be found in
Volume 31 of Lenin's Collected Works;
however, the last 18 words have in fact been edited out!]45

Anyone who thinks these comments are prejudicial to Stalinism should perhaps reflect
on the fact that the contrary idea -- that socialism could be built in
one country -- has been refuted by history.

Furthermore, the dire political consequences of the idea that socialism could be built in one country
can be seen in the subsequent use to which dialectics was put to defend and
rationalise this
counter-revolutionary
idea, and to try to limit (or deny) the catastrophic damage it inevitably
inflicted on the international workers' movement in particular, and Marxism in general.

And, this is precisely where DM/MD comes into its own:
it is invaluable if and when short-term, opportunistic tactics have to be sold to party cadres (nationally,
or world-wide). Since it seems to offer an 'orthodox revolutionary method' --
which supposedly
bears Marx's
imprimatur
(certainly Engels's) --, and can be used to 'justify' anything
whatsoever and its opposite, often by the very same individual, it carries much weight
among comrades.

Trotskyists, of
course, argue for the exact opposite conclusion, using equally sound 'dialectical' arguments to show
how and why the revolution decayed, and how the
fSU could still be a workers'
state (albeit, 'degenerated'), even if the proletariat were oppressed and
exploited for their pains --, and, incidentally, how
STDs and
MISTs
'misuse'/ignore 'the dialectic' in order to arrive at opposite conclusions! [On that, see
below.]

Dialectics can thus be used to defend and
rationalise anything the Party, or a particular dialectician, chooses, as the political
(or factional) circumstances require.

Indeed,
Stalinism and Trotskyism (rightly or wrongly) parted company largely over of
their differing views on the international revolution, workers' control and party democracy. Of course,
this rift wasn't just about ideas! Hard-headed decisions were taken for
political reasons, but in order to rationalise these decisions and sell them to the
international communist movement, they were liberally coated with dialectical jargon.
How else would cadres swallow this poison?

Those who know the history of Bolshevism will also know of the incalculable damage
this deep rift has inflicted on Marxism world-wide ever since.

Later still, MD
was used to 'justify'/rationalise the catastrophic and reckless
class-collaborationist tactics imposed on both the Chinese and Spanish revolutions, just as
it was employed to rationalise/'justify' the ultra-left, "social
fascist" post-1929 about-turn by the
communist movement. This helped cripple the fight against the Nazis by suicidally
splitting the left in Germany, pitting communist against socialist, while Hitler
laughed all the way to the
Reichstag.45a

This 'theory' then helped 'excuse' the rotation of the Communist
Party through another 180 degrees
in its
next, class-collaborationist phase, the "Popular Front"
--, and then through another 180
in order to 'justify' the unforgivable Hitler-Stalin pact,
as part of the newly re-discovered 'revolutionary defeatist' stage --, and through yet another
180 two years later in the shape of 'The Great Patriotic War', following upon
Hitler's predictable invasion of the "Mother Land" -- "Holy
Russia".46

In attempting to justify these overnight
about-turns, and specifically the criminal, Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of
1939, all that
Ragani
Palme Dutt, for example, could say was:

"We are told that the Soviet-German pact has also
strengthened Nazi Germany. The process is of course dialectical, but
fundamentally Nazi Germany has been weakened by the Soviet-German Non-Aggression
Pact and is more weakened every day as this [dialectical -- RL] process is
continuing and is beginning to become clearer to more and more people." [King
and Mathews (1990), p.75. Bold emphasis added.]

Once more, it seems that to strengthen the Nazis
is dialectically to weaken them! We can see how accurate that analysis was
by the fact that the dialectically "weakened"
Wehremacht was able to conquer most of
Europe within two years, and large swathes of the fSU in six months! It
was only Hitler's incompetent generalship and the Russian winter that saved the USSR from
total annihilation.

Post-1945, one more dialectical flip saw the invention of "peace-loving" nations versus the
evil US Empire. History was now the struggle between "progressive, peace-loving"
peoples and
reactionary regimes, the class war lost in all the dust kicked up by so much
dialectical spinning.

[Indeed, and by now, Marx would be doing much more than 180 degree flips in his grave!]

Every single one of these 'somersaults' had a catastrophic
impact on the international workers' movement. [For example, the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Treaty fatally weakened the opposition to
fascism in France prior to the German invasion of May 1940, which, of course, forms
part of the explanation why France collapsed so quickly; this is quite apart
from the fact that it allowed Hitler to concentrate his forces in the West, no
longer having to worry about the eastern front.]

Collectively, these dialectical flips cast a long
shadow across the Communist
Party worldwide, reducing it to the sad, reformist excuse that we see among us today.

However, and far, far worse: as noted above, these 'contradictory' about-turns helped pave
the way for fascist aggression and the Third Reich. In which case, this 'theory'
has played
its own small, shameful, but indirect part in the deaths of millions of workers and
countless numbers of communists, Jews, Gypsies, Russians and Slavs -- alongside the many hundreds of
thousands of mentally-ill and handicapped victims surrendered to the Nazi death
machine by opportunist dialecticians.46a0

Because of their continual, dialectically-inspired
twists and turns, STDs in effect all but invited the Nazi tiger to
rip European humanity to shreds.

And, it was only too happy to oblige.

More 'dialectical
contradictions' --, more dead workers.

The negative effect on the reputation of Marxism of all this spinning on the great mass of
workers can't be over-estimated, howsoever hard one tries.

Talk to anyone about Marxism (and not just Communism), and you will be regaled
with much of the above. Thus, these days, everyone 'knows' it "doesn't work",
and stands for bureaucratic authoritarianism, heartless oppression and cynical
realpolitik.

We can only put all this down to "capitalist propaganda" if we want to see yet more
dialectical disasters.

Of course, none of this is the sole fault of this mystical theory; but it is
undeniable that it was a major factor in helping to rationalise
the above political gyrations (for whatever other political reasons they were in fact
taken), and in helping sell them to party cadres. Over the years, this has had an inevitable
and seriously demoralising effect on the entire movement.

Moreover, no other theory (save, perhaps,
Zen Buddhism!)
could so easily excuse the
continual, and almost overnight, changes in strategy and tactics --, or rationalise
so effectively the pathetic reasons that were given for the criminally
unacceptable political U-turns imposed on the Communist Party
internationally by post-1925 Stalinism.

Nor, indeed, could any other theory have so effortlessly licensed the grinding to dust of
the
core and periphery of the
old
Bolshevik Party in the 1930s, as scores of leading (and thousands of ordinary) comrades were put on 'trail'
on trumped-up charges, and then executed -- or, more likely, were summarily shot.

And you can still find
communists
defending the execution of these "wreckers" and "fascist" spies (the core of
the party leadership!), along equally crazy, dialectical lines!

Millions dead, Bolshevism in tatters and Marxism a foul stench in the nostrils
of workers everywhere.

Anyone
who knows anything about Maoism will also know that
Maoist Dialecticians [MISTs] are serious
DM-oholics,
and will brook no compromise. [Excellent recent examples of this phenomenon can be found
here and
here. This might have something to do with the fact that
Daoism shares
much with Maoism and DM. More on this in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary
here).]

Nevertheless, such deep dialectical devotion has meant that the anti-democratic and class collaborationist
tactics adopted by the
CPSU were
copied by theCCP under
Mao(even if this was done for locally different reasons). For example,
the use of "principal" and "secondary" contradictions to justify the suicidal
alliances with the
Guomindang,
the use of UOs to rationalise one-party, autocratic rule, and the reference to
"leaps" to excuse the lunatic and murderous "Great
Leap Forward".

MISTs are among the most fanatical
anti-Revisionists on the planet, but has a single one given Mao a hard time for
revising Hegel, Marx, Engels and Lenin, who knew nothing of such
'contradictions'?

Once more:are you joking?

Consider the first two of these: class collaboration
and anti-democratic centralisation. Dialectical arguments favouring
class-collaboration and the centralisation ("concentration") of power weren't
exclusive to CPSU theorists. In the mid-1930s, the abrupt change
from outright opposition to the Guomindang to a policy of forming a united front
with them was justified by, among other things, yet another dollop of
dialectics!

The whole sorry affair is well documented in
Werner Meissner's detailed study; the reader is directed there for more
details. However, a few choice examples will illustrate the influence of
dialectical mayhem on the minds of CCP theorists. Consider the arguments of
Ai
Ssu-ch'i (whose work was highly influential on Mao):46a

"The law of identity is a rule of the abstract,
absolute unity; it sees in identical things only the aspect of absolute
identity, recognising this aspect alone and disregarding its own contradictory
and antagonistic aspects. Since an object can only be absolutely identical to
itself, it therefore can't be identical to another aspect. One expresses this
with the formula: A is not Not-A, or A is B (sic) and simultaneously it can't be
Not-B.... For example, 'retreat is not attack' (A is Not-A (sic)),
concentration is limitation of democracy (A is B), one can't in this case
develop democracy (simultaneously 'not is Not-B' (sic)). In this definition, an
object (concept, thing, etc.) is confronted absolutely with another object,
which lies beyond the actual object, a consequence of which is that an object
(A) and the others (Not-A) have no relations at all with each other.... The law
of identity thus only recognises abstract identity, and the law of contradiction
only recognises an absolute opposite." [Ai Ssu-ch'i, 'Formal Logic And
Dialectic', quoted in Meissner (1990), p.107. Bold emphasis added.]

We have
already had occasion to note the
incondite
and
sloppy syntax
found throughout the writings of these 'superior' dialectical logicians, but
here we encounter yet another example. For instance, the "A" in this passage is
at one point "retreat",
while "Not-A"
is "not attack"! Ai's schema should therefore have been "A is not-B".

[This is reminiscent of
Palme Dutt's 'dialectical' idea that to sign a treaty with Hitler was to weaken
the Nazis. In addition, it has already been
shown that the above 'conclusions' only seem to follow because everything has
been turned into an object (or the name of an object) of some sort.]

Despite this, Ai Ssu-ch'i
continues in the same fantastical vein:

"The law of the excluded third specifies: either
there is an absolute identity (A is B) or an absolute opposition (A is not B);
an object can't be simultaneously identical and at the same time be
antagonistic. For example 'concentration' is either limited democracy or
unlimited democracy; it can't at the same time be limited and a developed
democracy. A government in which the people participate is either a democratic
organ or it is not a democratic organ. It can't be simultaneously democratic
and insufficiently democratic. Therefore the law of the excluded third only
recognises opposition or unity, and struggles against the 'unity of opposites'.
This meant that it ['formal logic'] and the dialectic are diametrically
opposed." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]

This, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with the LEM;
Ai Ssu-ch'i
has simply made this tale up (as
did Hegel before him).

[LEM = Law of Excluded Middle.]

In relation to the above (i.e, "retreat is not attack"), and the question
whether increased democracy implied further concentration of power at the centre
(which might appear to those trapped in a 'formal' view of the world as
diametrically opposed, and which we have already seen Stalin brush aside with an
appeal to DM-'contradictions')
Meissner summarises Ai Ssu-ch'i's main
points as follows:

"1. What is the meaning of 'Retreat is not
attack'? As we will see in more detail below, this formulation referred to the
strategic principles of the long-protracted war....

"For Mao Tse-Tung...the defence of
Wuhan had no
special meaning. Instead he advocated surrendering the city and building up the
resistance in the countryside. Ai Ssu-ch'i thus defended Mao's tactics, in that
he dismissed the phrase 'Retreat is not attack' as 'formal logically'. To
consider the 'retreat' from Wuhan solely as a retreat or non-attack
corresponded, according to Ai, to the first law of 'formal logic' and was in no
way seen as 'dialectical'. On the other hand, Ai wanted to show that the retreat
was at one and the same time both a retreat and not a retreat.... The retreat
thus contained an attack.

"2. The explanations of 'democratisation' and
'concentration' were also a criticism of
Wang Ming's concepts of setting back
'democratisation' in favour of the 'concentration' of all political and military
forces, and of attempting to commit the CCP exclusively to the support of the
national government. Behind this was hidden the consideration that a possible
'democratisation' of Kuomintang control could lead to an impairment of the
military effectiveness of the United Front. Ai criticised this view as 'formal
logically', because 'democratisation' and 'concentration' were seen as mutually
exclusive contradictions. 'If we thus say: during the war against Japan,
everything must be concentrated and united, but at the same time as much
democracy as possible must be developed, that is, according to the rules of
formal logic, unreasonable, i.e., illogical.' However according to Ai, that was
true only for the rules of 'formal' not of 'dialectical logic.'

[This was] because, according to
'dialectical logic', 'democratisation' and 'concentration' were not mutually
exclusive but rather represented a unity. Ai thus argued in support of Mao
Tse-tung's position since Mao had often insisted that the 'democratisation' of
all areas of the state by the Kuomintang was essential for the concentration of
all forces in the struggle against Japan.

"3. However, Ai Ssu-ch'i' made a further
observation concerning the relationship between the CCP and the Kuomintang by
speaking of the 'unification of several objects identical to themselves' and by
characterising them as a 'formal-logical' combination of independent, mutually
unrelated objects, which thus represented a state of rest. The 'formal-logical
identity' served him as an example of how the relationship between the two
parties should not be constituted. The United Front was not to be a
condition of repose, but the very reverse: the 'struggle' was to form the
'driving force'.... This was a clear rejection of the concept of the Commintern
faction within the United Front which wanted to suspend the struggle against the
Kuomintang.

"Through the example of the 'law of identity', Ai
also grappled with the question of how far the CCP should acquiesce in the
Kuomintang's demand to base itself on the 'Three principles of the people',
without endangering the independence of the CCP....

'Since the law of identity only recognises the
absolute aspect of identity, one can maintain in the United Front that all
parties and factions have now already given up their independence and have only
one goal; consequently, many people say that the CP has given up Marxism. Since,
on the other hand, the law of contradiction only recognises the absolute
opposite, some people advocate the view that every party and faction must retain
its own independent programme and organisation'. [Ibid.]

"Ai characterised the adherents of the first view
as 'right deviationists' and those of the second as 'left deviationists'....
Both groups...are, according to Ai, 'formal-logical' in their thought; they
consider one aspect of the whole and make it absolute.... 'Formal logic'
recognises only attack and/or retreat, only concentration and/or democracy, only
the 'three principles of the people' and/or communism. However, it is not
capable of comprehending the existing relationships between those respective
pairs of objects....

"Thus, in concrete terms, 'dialectical logic' can
be explained thus: the United Front is accepted and at the same time rejected,
in that the struggle against the Kuomintang is to be continued within the United
Front." [Meissner (1990), pp.107-110. Bold emphases added.]

So, once again, we witness a dialectician using DM to derive specific
conclusions -- a result required for political reasons -- and their opposite, at the same time.

Anyone interested in material like this can read plenty more of it,
comprised of page-after-page of
lame-brained
'logic' (not all of it from the writings of
Ai Ssu-ch'i), in Meissner's book. In these writings alone
we can see how dialectics 'allowed' its acolytes to see the
world in whatever way they found expedient, just as we can see how DM helped insulate their thought
processes from material reality itself.

Consider next the second of these examples: the 'contradiction'
between centralised state power and greater social and democratic accountability. Dialectical
dodges similar to those
employed by Stalin
were
pressed in to service by Mao and his ideologues in order to
rationalise this "paradox", by an appeal to the alleged 'contradictory' nature of
'socialist' democracy. [Indeed, we saw some of this 'logic' at work in Ai Ssu-ch'i's
'reasoning' above.]

Mao himself tried to rationalise class-collaboration and the contradictory combination of autocracy with proletarian democracy
along by-now-familiar Stalinist lines. Here he first of all establishes the
truth of certain DM-principles (with some home-spun 'logic', thus confirming
their dogmatic and a priori nature), which meant that no one could
legitimately question them. He was then able to appeal to the supposed
self-evidence of these ideas to 'justify' moves away from democratic governance
as a move toward it. Only those who did not 'understand' dialectics could
possibly demure:

"The contradictory aspects in every process
exclude each other, struggle with each other and are in opposition to each
other. Without exception, they are contained in the process of development of
allthings and in all human thought. A simple process contains only a
single pair of opposites, while a complex process contains more. And in turn,
the pairs of opposites are in contradiction to one another.)

"That is how all things in the objective world
and all human thought are constituted and how they are set in motion.

"This being so, there is an utter lack of
identity or unity. How then can one speak of identity or unity?

"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can
exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for
its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a
concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no
death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no
'below'.... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without
tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there
would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie.
Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or
semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist
oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the
one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are
interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this
character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory
aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being
in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are
interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies
'how opposites can be...identical'. How then can they be
identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the
first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the
contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is
identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity?
No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for
their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other.
That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a
thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its
opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

"Why is there identity here, too? You see, by
means of revolutionthe proletariat, at one time the ruled, is
transformed into the ruler, while the bourgeoisie, the erstwhile ruler, is
transformed into the ruled and changes its position to that originally occupied
by its opposite. This has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will
take place throughout the world. If there were no interconnection and identity
of opposites in given conditions, how could such a change take place?

"The Kuomintang, which played a certain positive
role at a certain stage in modern Chinese history, became a
counter-revolutionary party after 1927 because of its inherent class nature and
because of imperialist blandishments (these being the conditions); but it has
been compelled to agree to resist Japan because of the sharpening of the
contradiction between China and Japan and because of the Communist Party's
policy of the united front (these being the conditions). Things in contradiction
change into one another, and herein lies a definite identity....

"To consolidate the dictatorship of the
proletariat or the dictatorship of the people is in fact to prepare the
conditions for abolishing this dictatorship and advancing to the higher stage
when all state systems are eliminated. To establish and build the Communist
Party is in fact to prepare the conditions for the elimination of the Communist
Party and all political parties. To build a revolutionary army under the
leadership of the Communist Party and to carry on revolutionary war is in fact
to prepare the conditions for the permanent elimination of war. These opposites
are at the same time complementary....

"All contradictory things are interconnected; not
only do they coexist in a single entity in given conditions, but in other given
conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. This is the full
meaning of the identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed
'how they happen to be (how they become) identical -- under what conditions
they are identical, transforming themselves into one another'." [Mao
(1961), pp.337-40. Bold emphases added. I have quoted this passage in full
since, when I haven't, I have been accused it 'taking out of context'.]47

Hence, for Mao, as it was for Stalin, less democracy meant
more democracy!

[As we have
seen,
the theory that things "struggle" with and then
turn into their
opposites is defective, which means that dialectics, the erstwhile theory of
change,
can't in fact account
for change! (See here, too.)]

Confused ideas like these have been shown up for what they are in other
Essays posted at this site, but those quoted above have been included to demonstrate
how Maoist versions of MD
helped corrupt not only Mao's thought processes, but also the strategy and tactics of
the CCP.

[Once more, while there were hard-headed political reasons for
these moves, MD
provides opportunists like Mao with an ideal
rhetorical device for selling anything whatsoever,
and its opposite, to the rank-and-file of the party.]

MD: tested in practice?

Once again: yet more 'dialectical
contradictions', yet more dead workers, and yet more ordure heaped on Marxism.

And what is more, we can all see the results for ourselves in that model
'socialist' state: China.

At the very least, this means that approximately 20% of the world's population
can't now
(and might not in the foreseeable future ever) be won over to any credible form of
Marxism, since the vast majority have been inured to it having seen the dire
consequences of this contradictory theory, which preaches 'proletarian
democracy', but won't actually trust them with any of it -- alongside the "mass-line",
while practicing mass oppression --, these dialectical 'contradictions'
rationalised along sound Stalinist lines.

Chinese workers don't need anyone to
enlighten them about the results of "practice"; the vast majority can see for
themselves the political and social consequences of this 'theory'.

Trotskyism has similarly been cursed by the
Dialectical Deity; its founder succeeded in super-gluing his followers to the
discordant
dialectical doctrine that the 'socialist' regime in the fSU was contradictory
-- as Alex Callinicos notes:

"There is, moreover, a third respect in which the
classical Marxist tradition is relevant to understanding the Eastern European
revolutions. For that tradition gave birth to the first systematic attempt at a
social and historical analysis of Stalinism. Trotsky's The Revolution
Betrayed (1937) pioneered that analysis by locating the origins of the
Stalin phenomenon in the conditions of material scarcity prevailing in the Civil
War of 1918-21, in which the bureaucracy of party officials began to develop. He
concluded that the USSR was a 'degenerated workers' state', in which the
bureaucracy had succeeded in politically expropriating the proletariat but left
the social and economic foundations of workers' power untouched. The
contradictions of that analysis, according to which the workers were still
the ruling class of a state which denied them all political power, did not
prevent Trotsky's more dogmatic followers extending it to China and Eastern
Europe, even though the result was to break any connection between socialism and
the self-emancipation of the working class: socialism, it seemed, could be
imposed by the Red Army or peasant guerrillas." [Callinicos (1991), pp.18-19. Bold emphasis
and link added; italic emphasis in the original. Minor typo corrected.]

In which case, it made perfectly good 'dialectical-sense' to suppose that the ruling-class (i.e.,
the
proletariat!) exercised no power at all, and were systematically oppressed for their pains, even while they
were still the ruling-class!

[This is the Trotskyist equivalent of the
"Retreat is attack" nostrum that Ai
Ssu-ch'i tried to sell his readers, which we met earlier.]

Here is Trotsky himself:

"The bourgeois norms of distribution, by hastening the
growth of material power, ought to serve socialist aims -- but only in the last
analysis. The state assumes directly and from the very beginning a dual
character: socialistic, insofar as it defends social property in the means of
production; bourgeois, insofar as the distribution of life's goods is carried
out with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing
therefrom. Such a
contradictory
characterization may horrify the dogmatists and scholastics; we can only offer
them our condolences." [Trotsky
(1977), p.54. Bold emphasis added.]

Hence, because MD
appeared to demand
it, all good Trotskyists were required to defend the USSR as a "workers' state" --, albeit
"degenerated". As he argued at
length [in Trotsky (1971)] only those who failed to "understand" dialectics would
think to disagree:

"Is
it possible after the conclusion of the German-Soviet pact to consider the USSR
a workers' state? The future of the Soviet state has again and again aroused
discussion in our midst. Small wonder; we have before us the first experiment in
the workers' state in history. Never before and nowhere else has this phenomenon
been available for analysis. In the question of the social character of the USSR, mistakes
commonly flow, as we have previously stated, from replacing the historical fact
with the programmatic norm. Concrete fact departs from the norm. This does not
signify, however, that it has overthrown the norm; on the contrary, it has
reaffirmed it, from the negative side. The degeneration of the first workers'
state, ascertained and explained by us, has only the more graphically shown what
the workers' state should be, what it could and would be under certain
historical conditions. The contradiction between the concrete fact and the
norm constrains us not to reject the norm but, on the contrary, to fight for it
by means of the revolutionary road.... (p.3)

"The events did not catch us unawares. It is
necessary only to interpret them correctly. It is necessary to understand
clearly that sharp contradictions are contained in the character of the USSR
and in her international position. It is impossible to free oneself from those
contradictions with the help of terminological sleight-of-hand ('workers' state'
-- 'not workers' state'). We must take the facts as they are. We must build
our policy by taking as our starting point the real relations and contradictions....(p.24)

"The present political discussion in the party
has confirmed my apprehensions and warning in an incomparably sharper form than
I could have expected, or, more correctly, feared.... The attitude of
[Shachtman and
Burnham] toward the nature of the Soviet state reproduces point for
point their attitude toward the dialectic....(pp.60-61)

"...Burnham and Shachtman
themselves demonstrated that their attitude toward such an 'abstraction' as
dialectical materialism found its precise manifestation in their attitude toward
the Soviet state.... (pp.61-62)

"Last year I was visited by a young British
professor of political economy, a sympathizer of the
Fourth International.
During our conversation on the ways and means of realizing socialism, he
suddenly expressed the tendencies of
British utilitarianism in the spirit of
Keynes and others: 'It is necessary to determine a clear economic end, to choose
the most reasonable means for its realization,'. I remarked: 'I see that you are
an adversary of dialectics.' He replied, somewhat astonished: 'Yes, I don't see
any use in it.' 'However,' I replied to him, 'the dialectic enabled me on the
basis of a few of your observations upon economic problems to determine what
category of philosophical thought you belong to -- this alone shows that there
is an appreciable value in the dialectic.' Although I have received no word
about my visitor since then, I have no doubt that this anti-dialectic
professor maintains the opinion that the USSR is not a workers' state, that
unconditional defense of the USSR is an 'out-moded' opinion.... If it is possible to place a given
person's general type of thought on the basis of his relation to concrete
practical problems, it is also possible to predict approximately, knowing his
general type of thought, how a given individual will approach one or another
practical question. That is the incomparable educational value of the
dialectical method of thought.... (pp.62-63)

"The definition of the USSR given by comrade
Burnham, 'not a workers' and 'not a bourgeois state,' is purely negative,
wrenched from the chain of historical development, left dangling in mid-air,
void of a single particle of sociology and represents simply a theoretical
capitulation of pragmatism before a contradictory historical
phenomenon.

"If Burnham were a dialectical materialist,
he would have probed the following three questions: (1) What is the historical
origin of the USSR? (2) What changes has this state suffered during its
existence? (3) Did these changes pass from the quantitative stage to the
qualitative? That is, did they create a historically necessary domination by
a new exploiting class? Answering these questions would have forced Burnham to
draw the only possible conclusion -- the USSR is still a degenerated workers'
state.... (p.68)

"It is not surprising that the
theoreticians of the opposition who reject dialectic thought capitulate
lamentably before the contradictory nature of the USSR. However the
contradiction between the social basis laid down by the revolution, and the
character of the caste which arose out of the degeneration of the revolution is
not only an irrefutable historical fact but also a motor force. In our
struggle for the overthrow of the bureaucracy we base ourselves on this
contradiction.... (p.69)

"...Dialectic training of the mind, as
necessary to a revolutionary fighter as finger exercises to a pianist, demands
approaching all problems as processes and not as motionless categories.
Whereas vulgar evolutionists, who limit themselves generally to recognizing
evolution in only certain spheres, content themselves in all other questions
with the banalities of 'common sense.'

"A vulgar petty-bourgeois radical is similar to a
liberal 'progressive' in that he takes the USSR as a whole, failing to
understand its internal contradictions and dynamics. When Stalin concluded
an alliance with Hitler, invaded Poland, and now Finland, the vulgar radicals
triumphed; the identity of the methods of Stalinism and fascism was proved. They
found themselves in difficulties however when the new authorities invited the
population to expropriate the land-owners and capitalists -- they had not foreseen
this possibility at all! Meanwhile the social revolutionary measures, carried
out via bureaucratic military means, not only did not disturb our, dialectic,
definition of the USSR as a degenerated workers' state, but gave it the most
incontrovertible corroboration. Instead of utilizing this triumph of Marxian
analysis for persevering agitation, the petty-bourgeois oppositionists began to
shout with criminal light-mindedness that the events have refuted our prognosis,
that our old formulas are no longer applicable.... (pp.70-71)

"Tomorrow the Stalinists will strangle the
Finnish workers. But now they are giving -- they are compelled to give -- a
tremendous impulse to the class struggle in its sharpest form. The leaders of
the opposition construct their policy not upon the 'concrete' process that is
taking place in Finland, but upon democratic abstractions and noble sentiments.... (p.74)

"Anyone acquainted with the history of the
struggles of tendencies within workers' parties knows that desertions to the
camp of opportunism and even to the camp of bourgeois reaction began not
infrequently with rejection of the dialectic. Petty-bourgeois intellectuals
consider the dialectic the most vulnerable point in Marxism and at the same time
they take advantage of the fact that it is much more difficult for workers to
verify differences on the philosophical than on the political plane. This long
known fact is backed by all the evidence of experience.... (p.94)

"The opposition circles consider it possible to
assert that the question of dialectic materialism was introduced by me only
because I lacked an answer to the 'concrete' questions of Finland, Latvia,
India, Afghanistan, Baluchistan and so on. This argument, void of all merit in
itself, is of interest however in that it characterizes the level of certain
individuals in the opposition, their attitude toward theory and toward
elementary ideological loyalty. It would not be amiss, therefore, to refer to
the fact that my first serious conversation with comrades Shachtman and Warde,
in the train immediately after my arrival in Mexico in January 1937, was devoted
to the necessity of persistently propagating dialectic materialism. After
our American section split from the Socialist Party I insisted most strongly on
the earliest possible publication of a theoretical organ, having again in mind
the need to educate the party, first and foremost its new members, in the spirit
of dialectic materialism. In the United States, I wrote at that time, where
the bourgeoisie systematically instills (sic) vulgar empiricism in the workers, more
than anywhere else is it necessary to speed the elevation of the movement to a
proper theoretical level.... (p.142)

"This impulse in the direction of socialist
revolution was possible only because the bureaucracy of the USSR straddles and
has its roots in the economy of a workers' state. The revolutionary utilization
of this 'impulse' by the Ukrainian Byelo-Russians was possible only through the
class struggle in the occupied territories and through the power of the example
of the October Revolution. Finally, the swift strangulation or
semi-strangulation of this revolutionary mass movement was made possible through
the isolation of this movement and the might of the Moscow bureaucracy.
Whoever failed to understand the dialectic interaction of these three factors:
the workers' state, the oppressed masses and the Bonapartist bureaucracy, had
best restrain himself from idle talk about events in Poland...." (p.163)[Trotsky (1971). Bold emphases alone added. Minor typos corrected. I have quoted Burnham's response in
Appendix C, where we will see that
many of Trotsky's claims about what the Red Army would or wouldn't do in Finland
and the Baltic States were wildly inaccurate, as he himself later had to admit. So
much for the predictive powers of
DL.]47a

All this helped cripple the politics of the
Fourth
International, demobilising militants in the run-up to WW2 -- whose cadres, even while they were advocating a
principled anti-imperialist stance, were quite happy to defend Stalinist
Imperialism.

And, as if to compound this monumental
error,
Trotsky also used dialectics to justify Stalin's
murderous invasion of Finland!

As Alex Callinicos pointed out above, such dedicated
dialectical devotion prompted
OTs to argue that Red
Army tanks were capable of
bringing socialism to Eastern Europe in the absence of a workers' revolution
(a line that was in fact in agreement with the analysis concocted by the Stalinists!).

Substitutionism justified by another dose of dialectical double-dealing.

After Trotsky was murdered by a Stalinist agent, the application of 'scientific dialectics' to the contradictory
nature of fSU (alongside its satellites in Eastern Europe and elsewhere) split the Fourth International into countless
warring sects,
which have continued to fragment to this day.

Indeed, this is the only aspect of practical dialectics that Trotskyists have managed to
perfect as their movement
continues to splinter under its own 'internal contradictions'.

Trotsky's heirs couldn't quite decide which was
the more important principle: loyalty to their founder's 'dialectical method', or to Marx's belief
that the
emancipation of the working class
must be an act of the workers themselves. If they chose the latter, the
emancipation of the working class can't be an act of the Red Army (in Finland, Eastern Europe or
even North Korea), 'Third World' guerrillas
(in China, Cuba, Nepal, Peru, etc.), nationalist/'progressive' dictators, or even radicalised
students -- to name just a few of the forces that have been 'dialectically substituted' for the
proletariat by assorted Trotskyists ever since. On the other hand, if they chose the former, all of
the above made eminent good sense. Socialism from below was now to be replaced
by
socialism from above,
courtesy of this boss-class theory.

[Of course, this is one application of the
LEM that Dialectical Trotskyists can't dodge: socialism from above or socialism
from below?]

[LEM = Law of Excluded Middle.]

Indeed, if it were possible to a create workers' state in this way
(deformed/degenerated or not), then Stalinism must indeed be "progressive"
-- and
Pablo
was right.

It is little use complaining that this contradicts Trotsky's belief that
Stalinism is inherently counter-revolutionary (as, for instance,
these comrades try to do, again on sound 'dialectical' lines), since, if everything is
contradictory, then on equally sound 'dialectical' lines, so is Stalinism.
Hence, on that basis, the fSU is both counter-revolutionary and 'progressive'
all rolled into one -- as we (supposedly) witnessed, for example, when the
Red Army invaded
Afghanistan. [This link leads to an article which is plainly the
Spartacist equivalent of the "Retreat is attack" claim of
Ai
Ssu-ch'i that we met earlier.]

[I hasten to add that I do not think Stalinism is
progressive; quite the reverse, in fact. But, if I were a DM-fan, I could
easily 'prove' it is the most progressive force in human history -- and its
opposite.]

Dialectics has been used, and is still being used, to
justify every conceivable form of substitutionism.
Just to take one more example: dialectical dissembling allowed Ted Grant to
invent yet another contradictory idea --
"Proletarian
Bonapartism" -- in order to account for
and/or rationalise the fact that the Stalinist regime in the fSU and the Maoist clique in
China were actually oppressing the supposed ruling-class: i.e., workers!
That contradictory fact didn't mean that these weren't workers' states. Far from
it, it proved they were!

All this dialectical dithering has gravely wounded Trotskyism. It might never recover. At present the signs are
not too good. The
difficulties recently experienced in UK-Respect (and
now in the UK-SWP) are just another
sign
of this long-term malaise.

Here, for example, are two paragraphs taken from a recent letter written by the New Zealand SWP to the UK-SWP:

"'The critics of the [UK] SWP's position have organised themselves under the slogan
'firm in principles, flexible in tactics'. But separating principles and tactics in
this way is completely un-Marxist. Tactics derive from principles. Indeed
the only way that principles can become effective is if they are embodied in
day-to-day tactics.' [This is a quote from the UK-SWP.]

"In contrast, Socialist Worker -- New Zealand sees
Respect -- and other 'broad left' formations, such as
Die Linke in Germany, the
Left Bloc in Portugal, the
PSUV in Venezuela and
RAM in New Zealand
-- as
transitional formations, in the sense that Trotsky would have understood.
In programme and organization, they must 'meet the class half-way' -- to provide a dialectical unity between
revolutionary principle and reformist mass consciousness. If they have an
electoral orientation, we must face the fact that this can't be avoided at this
historical point. Lenin said in 'Left-Wing' Communism that
parliamentary politics are not yet obsolete as far as the mass of the class are
concerned -- this is not less true in 2007 than it was in 1921. The question is
not whether Respect should go in a 'socialist' or 'electoralist' direction, but
in how Respect's electoral programme and strategy can embody a set of
transitional demands which intersect with the existing electoralist
consciousness of the working class." [Quoted from
here. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]

Tactics from principles, or flexible tactics from
inflexible principles? WTF does that mean? From which god-forsaken Thesaurus have these
gems been mined?

Internal Bulletins/Documents are full of empty, but
radical-sounding rallying calls like this. Phrases like "the relationship is
dialectical" and "the current situation is contradictory" litter such documents,
and are invariably a sign that the one using them has run out of arguments to
support their case.

Dialectical
dodges like this are then used to berate whoever
has fallen foul of the CC member (or party theorist) who has just hauled them
out of the archives -- or who has just
imported them from
the last faction fight --, this frame of mind aggravated by far too many years
of
"dialectical training" than is good for any human being to
have to endure.

This means that the Stalinists aren't the only
ones who can change tack overnight, and 'dialectically' create an opposite
analysis within hours of the ink having dried on the previous one. Here is a
description of how
the UK-SWP's CC has responded to a sizeable faction in their midst
(comprised partly of party heavyweights):

"The faction includes a whole raft of middle to senior
cadre, including 10 members of the NC [National Committee -- RL] and perhaps as
many former members of the CC; it includes people of unimpeachable moral
authority within the SWP, such as Pat Stack and Tony Cliff's biographer, Ian
Birchall. It is one thing to fold Richard Seymour into an amorphous morass of
hostile anti-Leninists and 'creeping feminists'. Ian Birchall simply does not
fit the bill.

"It was too much for the CC, in the end. Having spent
every bit of energy it could muster on preventing the opposition from forcing a
'special conference' -- from ruling motions out of order on technical grounds,
to imposing an arbitrary February 1 deadline for such motions -- it has executed
a whiplash U-turn
and called one itself.

"The CC's statement on the matter is remarkable
principally for being almost identical to every other statement the CC has put
out so far during this crisis. There are the usual attempts to foster a 'bunker
mentality' among the membership, shoring it up against 'attacks'...; the usual
scare stories about the horrors of permanent factions. There is just that one,
tiny, almost insignificant difference: that one week ago, such 'arguments' were
being mustered against the idea of revisiting the affair at a special
conference, but now they have mysteriously become arguments for doing
so." [Quoted from
here (a source I am loathe to use, but it seems to me to have got it right
this time).]

Once more, if you are trained to 'think
dialectically', such U-turns are par for the course.

[Apologies for that mixed metaphor! Several more examples of this phenomenon
are given in Essay Ten Part
One. See also my own experience of 'applied dialectics', recorded in
Essay One.
Similar things are now (allegedly) taking place in the UK-SWP's current
crisis.]

So, even in the Trotskyist 'tradition', dialectics is still
lumbering on, helping to wreck all in its path.

This section should be read
by NOTs (like myself) just as it was intended. However,
any Maoist or Stalinist readers who have made it this far should perhaps read it as
yet more
proof of the extent to which dialectics can, and has been 'misused' by us 'trots' --
although, it might not be easy for them provide an objective criterion that
distinguishes dialectics' 'proper' use from its 'misuse'. (And good luck with that
one!)

OTs should make of this
material what they can. They will, anyway, have given up on these Essays long ago -- even
if a single one of them actually bothers to read any of these Essays. In which
case, they are unlikely
to make it this far! Indeed, if the past is anything to go by, such
'scientifically'-minded souls will be busy warning
the unwary to avoid casting their innocent eyes on these infidel pages lest they
be led astray by my "elitism", "empiricism", "arrogance", and "formal thinking"
(the
OT equivalent of smallpox). (Any who find this difficult to believe should check
this or
this out (unfortunately, that site might vanish
off the internet any week now) -- or several of the links posted
here-- where they should find their doubts assuaged.)

Either way, this section will
help demonstrate that as far as dialectics is concerned, all four 'traditions' share a
common fondness for the same sort of mystificatory jargon, rhetorical flourishes
(mostly lifted word-for-word from Engels, or the other DM-classics -- Lenin, Stalin and Mao were
themselves particularly good at this),
sub-Aristotelian 'logic', and
Mickey Mouse Science, all the while using this
infinitely malleable theory to 'justify' almost anything which they needed to, and its opposite --
as we saw was the case in the last three
sub-sections.

In fact, as far as the
dialectics of nature is concerned it is hard to slip a party card between the views
expressed by MISTs, STDs, OTs, NOTs and non-Leninist Marxists alike.

At this point, it is pertinent to ask the
following question: Why did the ruling-class of the former Stalinist
states (particularly the fSU) find DM so conducive to their interests? Why were
they such avid fans of 'traditional' Marxist Philosophy? An unambiguous answer to this
query is all the more pressing in view of what Marx appeared to say about
'the
dialectic':

"In its mystified form, the dialectic became
the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and glorify what
exists. In its rational form it is a scandal and an abomination to the
bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire spokesmen, because it includes in its
positive understanding of what exists a simultaneous recognition of its
negation, its inevitable destruction; because it regards every historically
developed form as being in a fluid state, in motion, and therefore grasps its
transient aspect as well; and because it does not let itself be impressed by
anything (sic), being in its essence critical and revolutionary." [Marx (1976),
p.103. Bold emphasis added.]

The only conclusion that can be drawn from
this is that one of the following must be the case: (1) The ruling-classes of
the former Stalinist states weren't
part of a new, capitalist ruling-class, (2) Marx was wrong, or he was (3) Speaking
metaphorically, even hyperbolically
(in view of his obvious personification of 'the dialectic', where he tells us
that it "does not let itself be
impressed by anything").

It could be replied that in the hands
of STD hacks the dialectical method became "wooden and formulaic"; it was
little more than the "cynical and self-serving creed of a new and brutal ruling
class." [Rees (1998), p.196.]

While Rees's description of the nature of the
Stalinist ruling-elite will not be questioned here -- or anywhere else for
that matter -- the rest of what he had to say is
highly questionable.

[TAR = The Algebra of
Revolution, i.e., Rees (1998).]

It is worth pointing out here
that even avowedly Stalinist versions of DM emphasise change through
contradiction (often in terms indistinguishable from those found in TAR
or other OT-texts -- anyone who doubts this should read, for example, Shirokov (1937)).

This, of course, helps explain why, for example, UK-SWP outlets (such as
"Bookmarks" in London) find they can sell copies of
works on dialectics written by openly
Stalinist and rabidlyanti-Trotskyist writers -- like Cornforth
(among others) --, why an
Orthodox
Trotskyist site can link to arch-Stalinist, J D Bernal's writing on DM (link at the
foot of the page), and why some OTs openly appeal to the work of STDs like
Ilyenkov (for
example). [The
old
WRP were, for instance, rather fond of Ilyenkov's terminally obscure work.]

Indeed, up until a few years ago, OTs, STDs,
NOTs and MISTs could one and all read and study classic texts published by
Progress Publishers and
Foreign Languages Press (Stalinist and Maoist publishing houses,
respectively, which were regularly sold in Trotskyist outlets a generation or so
ago). [See also
the rather odd anomaly mentioned in Note
19a.]

Why were such State Capitalist/Stalinist/'Socialist'
regimes busy churning out classic works on dialectics by
the container load? Surely, if Marx were right, that would be rather like
Dracula running a
garlic farm, or Superman a
Kryptonite
factory?!

Perhaps this helps account for the fact that
books on MD are often published by capitalist
companies, too -- indeed,
TAR was itself
published by Routledge, Bertell Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic by the University of Illinois Press, and Raya Dunayevskaya's The
Power of Negativity by Lexington Books, and so on. How is it possible for
capitalist enterprises like these to publish works about a theory which is supposed to be an "abomination" in
their eyes?

Of course, all of this becomes explicable if, as is argued here, MD is
itself part of an ancient and long-standing tradition of ruling-class thought.
It is inexplicable
otherwise.

It could be argued in response that such outlets also
sell books on HM. However, since I am not committed to the truth of Marx's claim
(I merely quoted it to embarrass NOTs, and
HCDs, among others), I am not committed
either to the idea that
DM or HM is an anathema to the ruling-class, or to any capitalist publishing
house.
Clearly they sell such books to make a profit, just as they sell books on
mysticism. [What was it that Lenin said about
ropes?]

Nevertheless, the actual differences between
these three strands of dialectics (Stalinist, Maoist, and Trotskyist) are considerably more
difficult to describe than are their similarities. Indeed, we can test the veracity of that
allegation
if a dozen or more quotations (which have been
lifted from a selection of STD and non-STD sources, the identification of which
will be left until the end to assist in their non-biased appraisal) are compared.

[1] "Its conception of the inter-relation of
Theory and Practice, is the vital essence of Marxism and is that one aspect of
its many-faceted unity in which the significance of Dialectical Materialism is
most clearly seen…. This unity is a unity of inter-relation: it is
Materialist in that it is based on the primacy of practice, and
Dialectical in its postulation of the indispensable precondition for both
the practice and the unity….

"Its world-conception is Materialist
alike in its Objectivity and in its Activity -- in that the world is conceived as
a totality, and by means of its inseparably connected and never ceasing
interacting movements.

"And it is Dialectical in that these
inter-acting movements are recognised as begetting, of necessity, a perpetual
self-transformation of the Universe as a whole -- a universally inter-connected
series of processes in which old forms, formations, and inter-relations are
constantly being destroyed and replaced by new forms…."

[2] "Materialist dialectics was born of the
generalisation of scientific achievements and also of mankind's historical
experience, which showed that social life and human consciousness, like nature
itself, are in a state of constant change and development….

"Every system in the world is
formed through interaction between its constituent elements. In exactly the same
way all bodies acquire their properties through interaction and motion, through
which their properties are manifested. Interaction is universal…."

[3] "Dialectics is the logic
of movement, of evolution, of change. Reality is too full of contradictions, too
elusive, too manifold, too mutable to be snared in any single formula…. Each
particular phase of reality has its own laws and its own peculiar categories….
These laws and categories have to be discovered by direct investigation of the
concrete whole; they can't be excogitated by mind alone before the material
reality is analysed. Moreover, all reality is constantly changing, disclosing
ever new aspects of itself which have to be taken into account and which can't
be encompassed in the old formulas, because they are not only different from but
often contradictory to them."

[4] "Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does
not regard nature as just an agglomeration of things, each existing
independently of the others, but it considers things as 'connected with,
dependent on and determined by each other'. Hence, it considers that nothing can
be understood taken by itself, in isolation….

"Contrary to metaphysics,
dialectics considers everything as in 'a state of continuous movement and
change, of renewal and development….'

"The dialectical method
demands, first, that we should consider things, not each by itself, but always
in their interconnection with other things."

[5] "The dialectical [method]…involves, first
and foremost, three principles: totality, change and contradiction….

"Totality refers to the
insistence that the various seemingly separate elements of which the world is
composed are in fact related to one another….

"In a dialectical system, the
entire nature of the part is determined by its relationships with the other
parts and so with the whole. The part makes the whole, and the whole makes the
parts….

"Totality alone is not,
however, a sufficient definition of the dialectic….

"Change, development,
instability…are the very conditions for which a dialectical approach is designed
to account….

"A dialectical approach seeks
to find the cause of change within the system…. If change is internally
generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and development
as inherent properties of the system itself."

[6] "Marxist dialectics…examines the world in
constant motion, change and development….

"To gain knowledge of objects
and phenomena, it is necessary first of all to study their constant change and
development. To really know an object we must examine it in its development,
'self-motion', change.

"…Dialectics sees the sources
of development in the contradictions inherent in objects and phenomena….

"The material world is not only a developing,
but also a connected, integral whole. Its objects and phenomena do not
develop of themselves, in isolation, but in inseverable [sic] connection or
unity with other objects and phenomena….

"One of the most important aims of
materialist dialectics is the study of the world as an integral connected
whole, the examination of the universal connections of things."

[7] "Dialectics is also the
totality of the forms of natural and socio-historical development it its
universal form. For this reason the laws of dialectics are the laws of
development of things themselves, the laws of development of the self-same world
of natural and historical development. These laws are realised by mankind (in
philosophy) and verified by the practice of transforming both nature and
socio-economic relations."

[8] "Everything is not only part of the great
world process but is essentially a process. Its 'nature' can't be understood
apart from the form of change it undergoes, that is, inherent in it….

"But this development is not
something that proceeds in an automatic fashion, without cause…. Development is
always the result of internal conflict as well as of external relations,
themselves including conflict. It can only be explained and rationally grasped
to the extent that the internal contradictions of the thing have been
investigated."

[9] "[Dialectics] is a critique of static,
fixed categories usually used in science -- categories valid within certain
limits, which differ according to the case, but which prove inadequate to fully
grasp the nature of reality….

"[A] further characteristic
typical of processes of change is the 'negation of the negation' -- development
through a new synthesis emerging which surpasses and transforms the elements of
the 'contradiction'."

[10] "Dialectical thinking analyses all
things and phenomena in their continuous change…. Hegel in his Logic
established a series of laws: change of quantity into quality, development
through contradictions."

[11] "Dialectics is the logic of motion,
development, evolution…. Engels, following Hegel, called those who think in
absolute and unchanging categories, that is, who visualize the world as an
aggregate of unchanging qualities, metaphysicians….

"In these abstract formulas
we have the most general laws (forms) of motion, change, the transformation of
the stars of the heaven, of the earth, nature, and human society….

"Dialectics is the logic of development. It
examines the world -- completely without exception -- not as a result of creation,
of a sudden beginning, the realization of a plan, but as a result of motion, of
transformation. Everything that is became the way it is as a result of
lawlike development….

"Thus, 'the materialist
dialectic' (or 'dialectical materialism') is not an arbitrary combination of two
independent terms, but is a differentiated unity -- a short formula for a whole
and indivisible worldview, which rests exclusively on the entire development of
scientific thought in all its branches, and which alone serves as a scientific
support for human praxis."

[12] "Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics
does not regard Nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena,
unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a
connected and integral whole, in which things…are organically connected with,
dependent on, and determined by, each other.

"The dialectical method
therefore holds that no phenomenon in Nature can be understood if taken by
itself, isolated from surrounding phenomena….

"Contrary to metaphysics,
dialectics holds that Nature is not a state of rest and immobility, stagnation
and immutability, but a state of continuous movement and change, of continuous
renewal and development….

"The dialectical method
therefore requires that phenomena should be considered not only from the
standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the
standpoint of their movement, their change, their development, their coming into
being and going out of being….

"Contrary
to metaphysics, dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in
all things and phenomena of Nature…."

[13]"The
dialectical philosophy of Hegel deals with processes, not isolated events. It
deals with things in their life, not their death, in their inter-relations, not
isolated, one after the other. This is a startlingly modern and scientific way
of looking at the world. Indeed, in many aspects Hegel was far in advance of his
time....

"Dialectics is a method of
thinking and interpreting the world of both nature and society. It is a way of
looking at the universe, which sets out from the axiom that everything is in a
constant state of change and flux. But not only that. Dialectics explains that
change and motion involve contradiction and can only take place through
contradictions. So instead of a smooth, uninterrupted line of progress, we have
a line which is interrupted by sudden and explosive periods in which slow,
accumulated changes (quantitative change) undergoes a rapid acceleration, in
which quantity is transformed into quality. Dialectics is the logic of
contradiction....

"When we first contemplate
the world around us, we see an immense and amazingly complex series of
phenomena, an intricate web of seemingly endless change, cause and effect,
action and reaction. The motive force of scientific investigation is the desire
to obtain a rational insight into this bewildering labyrinth, to understand it
in order to conquer it. We look for laws which can separate the general from the
particular, the accidental from the necessary, and enable us to understand the
forces that give rise to the phenomena which confront us....

"In general, we can only
understand things by comparing them to other things. This expresses the
dialectical concept of universal interconnections. To analyse things in their
movement, development and relationships is precisely the essence of the
dialectical method. It is the exact antithesis of the mechanical mode of thought
(the 'metaphysical' method in the sense of the word used by Marx and Engels)
which views things as static and absolute. This was precisely the defect of the
old classical Newtonian view of the universe, which, for all its achievements,
never escaped from the one-sidedness which characterised the mechanistic world
outlook."

[14] "The second fundamental
principle of dialectical materialism lies in its theory of movement (or theory
of development). This means the recognition that movement is the form of the
existence of matter, an inherent attribute of matter, a manifestation of the
multiplicity of matter. This is the principle of the development of the world.
The combination of the principle of the development of the world with the
principle of the unity of the world, set forth above, constitutes the whole of
the world view of dialectical materialism. The world is nothing else but the
material world in a process of unlimited development....

"Dialectical
materialism's theory of movement is in opposition first of all with
philosophical idealism and with the theological concepts of religion. The
fundamental nature of all philosophical idealism and religious theology derives
from their denial of the unity and material nature of the world; and in
imagining that the movement and development of the world takes place apart from
matter, or took place at least in the beginning apart from matter, and is the
result of the action ofspirit, God, or divine forces....

"The causes of
the transformation of matter is to be found not without, but within. It is not
because of the impulsion of external mechanical forces, but because of the
existence within the matter in question of two components different in their
nature and mutually contradictory which struggle with one another, thus giving
an impetus to the movement and development of the matter. As a result of the
discovery of the laws of such movement and transformation, dialectical
materialism is capable of enlarging the principle of the material unity of the
world, extending it to the history of nature and society. Thus, not only it ispossible to investigate the world considered as matter in perpetual
movement, but the world can also be investigated as matter endlessly in movement
from a lower form to a higher form. That is to say, it is possible to
investigate the world as development and process.

"Dialectical
materialism investigate[s] the development of the world as a progressive
movement from the inorganic to the organic, and from thence to the highest form
of the movement of matter (society)."

[15] "Nature is
not an accidental collection of unconnected isolated independent things, but a
connected whole, in which all things are connected, determined by and dependent
on each other. Therefore nothing can be understood by itself -- in isolation --
but the way to understand anything is to see how it is conditioned by the
circumstances in which it arises....

"Nature is not
in a state of rest. Everything is continually moving and changing; there is
continuous renewal and development. Something is always arising and developing,
something is always disintegrating and dying away.

"Therefore we
must always think of things in motion, considering where they are
coming from and where they are going. And we must attend especially to what is
new, to what is arising and developing, because nothing persists
unchanged, and what seems established and lasting may already be about to pass
away....

"Every process
of development is a process of conflict, in which something is dying away, and
something is growing up, and this conflict between tendencies operating in
opposite directions is what conditions the whole process. A sharp break or
decisive leap occurs when one of the tendencies gains a decisive dominance over
the other.

"Thus the
development of the world is not a smooth, harmonious unfolding, but conflict and
contradiction are right at the very heart of things -- as Lenin put it in one
place: 'Dialectics is the study of contradiction within the very essence of
things.'

[16]
"Today...most people have no problem with the idea of scientific materialism.
Materialism is the basis of all scientific knowledge, and it says simply that
reality has an objective, concrete independence: there is nothing beyond nature
-- no supernatural god, fate or destiny. The laws of nature are to be found
within nature.

"Few people, either, will have a problem with the idea that this material
reality is in a constant process of change and transformation. Under a
laboratory microscope apparently dead matter is seen to be a mass of living
cells and organisms. Scientists have discovered proof that the universe itself
is still expanding.

"But what are the laws of this motion? Can we begin to discern general features
of the way things change? Can we codify these laws without imposing some
abstract scheme or model on our investigations?

"Marxists recognise the danger of this, but still believe that the essential
laws of motion -- both of nature and society -- can be codified. The first
attempts to do this used traditional, or formal, logic. The Greek philosopher,
Aristotle, systematised these laws which still hold good -- within certain
limits -- to this day.

"At the centre of these theories was the idea that a thing is equal to itself
and cannot therefore be at the same time equal to something else. Crucial as
this idea was for the development of arithmetic, basic accounting and the
categorisation of the natural world, it contained a basic flaw. It could not
account for change, for a process of becoming.

"It is precisely when things are in a process of development from one thing into
something else, that new and higher forms of logic are needed. Dialectics
applied to a study of all social and physical phenomena show that 'something'
can be itself and at the same time be in the process of becoming 'something
else'.

[17]
"Dialectical materialism is the world outlook and method of scientific
socialism. It holds that every natural, social and intellectual formation is the
transitory product of given material conditions. That all phenomena come into
being, develop and eventually perish as a result of the action of the
contradictions within them. For Marx and Engels dialectical materialism provided
the means by which the illusions of religion could be dispelled, philosophy
could be retrieved from speculation to serve the liberation of humanity, and
theory could be put on a scientific basis....

"All
phenomena contain contradictions which form the unity of opposites: society is
divided into classes. Marx's philosophy is partisan because reality is partisan.
Thought and philosophy could not be neutral because they are parts of a world in
struggle. In our epoch that struggle, and the principle contradiction
determining the fate of humanity, is the struggle between capital and labour....

"Matter
exists in motion. All matter, galaxies, plants, molecules and society is in a
state of motion. Human beings are part of matter, as is consciousness, but exist
in conflict with it. That conflict is conducted through production, which
discloses human kind to itself...."49

Admittedly, edited quotations
like these, taken out of context, can be highly misleading, but the extent to which these
sources agree is quite remarkable, whatever the context.

The number of virtually indistinguishable passages like these
can be multiplied by several orders of magnitude -- withease --, as any
reader possessed of inordinate patience and plenty of
Prozac may readily
confirm, providing they have access to the countless books and articles on DM that have
been written over the last hundred and forty years or so. The extreme and mind-numbingly repetitive nature of the
above quotations (along with the many hundreds that could have been cited
-- the vast majority of which agree with each other down to the minutest of
details, and which use almost exactly the same words and sentences (often
these have simply been
lifted verbatim from Engels or Lenin)) confirms the claim made several times in this Essay: key DM-theses are
about as changeable as
Protons.

In many ways, these passages not only
closely resemble one another, they function like the ritual and liturgical passages
used by the
genuine god-botherers among us, which passages they intone week in, week out; the
repetition of set phrases like these is more important than their
content. Hence, in books and articles on dialectics (especially those in the
LCD tradition), the
actual words used are more an affirmation of
orthodoxy, and a
commitment to
tradition, than they are a genuine contribution (or any contribution
at all) either to socialist theory or to understanding the world and how to
change it.

[However, it is important to add here what
is not being suggested: that Stalinism and Maoism, on the one
hand, and
Trotskyism, on the other, are even remotely similar in any other respect; indeed, in relation to their commitment to
the international revolution and
revolution from below, the
difference between Trotskyism and the other two'traditions' couldn't be more
marked. And yet, in relation to their adherence to DM-phraseology, it is hard to slip a party card between
them.]49a

Nevertheless, awkward questions remain: How
was it possible for the Stalinist ruling-classes/bureaucrats (of the fSU, Eastern
Europe, China and elsewhere) to adopt and then advocate enthusiastically a supposedly revolutionary theory
(i.e., DM),
which is identical in almost every respect to that espoused by genuine revolutionaries
--
if dialectics is such an "abomination" to all members of the
ruling-class and their hangers on? Even an allegedly "wooden and lifeless" version of DM (with its
emphasis on Totality and change through contradiction, etc., etc.) would be
no less "abominable".

The standard explanation why DM is accepted
by counter-revolutionaries (such as the above Stalinists) and revolutionaries
alike is that the Stalinist version is "wooden and lifeless", whereas the
revolutionary strain is 'vibrant' and 'un-dogmatic'. But this is highly implausible,
especially since both versions seem to be equally
wooden, lifeless and dogmatic, and
are practically indistinguishable from one another on the page/screen. It isn't as
if when OTTs (or even NOTs) write the very same words as
STDs and
MISTs their use of
these phrases is somehow less
wooden and lifeless. Not, that is, unless Trotskyists use aspecial sort of
ink, paper or computer screen.

[OTT = Orthodox Trotskyist
Theorist.]

Even so, it could be objected that it is the use to which dialectics is put -- not the phraseology -- that
distinguishes Stalinist/Maoist from Trotskyist/revolutionary versions of the
dialectic. Hence, when
the latter forms
part of a genuinely revolutionary movement (as opposed to when it is being used
cynically by a counter-revolutionary bureaucratic 'clique') it is
vibrant and alive.

[That passage can be read the same way by
supporters of each and every strain of Dialectical Marxism -- just swap the names around as the indignation
takes you.]

In fact, truth be told, some STDs (Russian and/or Chinese) display
a far more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of "the dialectic" than do
many OTs -- Lukacs,
Ilyenkov
and
Oizerman come to mind here. Another is Alexander Spirkin's intelligent analysis of the
Part/Whole relation, outlined
here; another is Yurkovets's discussion of "quality".
To that we can add Shirokov (1937), Thalheimer (1936), and Gollobin (1986) -- to
say nothing of Bukharin (2005).

Be this as it may, the response volunteered
three paragraphs back still assumes that the 'dialectic' has a genuine role to play in the revolutionary
movement. This idea has been subjected to sustained criticism in this Essay and throughout this site. The onus therefore is on those
who claim
this 'theory' has some sort of use/role to play -- i.e., that it can
ever be considered 'vibrant' -- the onus is on them to show how the 'dialectic' has featured in a positive way anywhere
or at any time
in the entire history of Marxism.49b

But, even if it could be demonstrated, it would
still be worth pointing out that in the hands of the STDs and MISTs (or, in the
hands of the OTTs
and NOTs, if you are a MIST or an STD yourself!) the dialectic was and still is put to use to derive conclusions that contradict
-- not without some irony -- those drawn by other revolutionaries from other
wings of Marxism. As we have seen, STDs and MISTs (or OTs and NOTs) use
dialectical concepts to justify everything from the denial of party democracy
and the concentration of power to the accusations made against the German SPD (that they were
"social Fascists"), from the about-turn in the Popular Front to the pact with Hitler and the subsequent war
against the Nazis, from the fight against Trotsky (accusing him of being a
fascist agent -- if true, that should have in fact made him a hero in Russia in 1940!),
to the argument justifying socialism in one country, from the repeated invasions of Eastern Europe
to the opposite conclusion drawn about most of these U-turns (often these are
advanced by the same individual or
party, sometimes on the same page or even in the same speech!).

In addition, we have even seen how Trotsky scandalously used
DM to
justify Stalin's invasion of Finland, and how the application of this theory to
the allegedly 'Degenerated' Workers' States in the fSU and
Eastern Europe split the Trotskyist
movement into countless warring sects. MD was also employed by NOTs to justify
the theory of State
Capitalism -- at the same time as it was being used by OTTs to 'refute' that very theory, in
order to show how "un-dialectical" it was -- just as it has been deployed to rationalise
substitutionist strategies of every stripe!

Ironically, the 'correct' use of the
dialectic amounts to its being employed to prove anything a particular theorist
finds expedient and its opposite!

Given such a shameful and opportunist history, one would
have thought that serious Marxists would want to disown anything that
remotely resembled the 'dialectic', especially if their particular version of it
is indistinguishable from the lethal STD stain -- or, from the "wooden",
"revisionist"/"abstract" MIST/OT/NOT version (depending, of course, on which one
of these traditions the reader doesn't belong to).

Finally, the quotation from Marx that opened
this section simply said that the dialectic was an "abomination" to the
bourgeoisie. He didn't qualify these words. He certainly
did not rule out a "wooden" version of it being an "abomination". What he wrote
has
to be modified considerably to make his words fit the picture the above counter-claim wishes to
paint.

To be sure, Marx did say that
"in its rational form it is a scandal and an abomination to the bourgeoisie".
But, "wooden" forms can be no less rational. Anyway, this response begs the question as to what
the
"rational" form of the dialectic is, or even whether there is such a
thing as its "rational" form. If, as these Essays have shown,
DM/MD
have no "rational" form -- just a rotten
core --, then wooden or plastic, there is no
detectable difference between
them.

These observations similarly apply to the
usual reason given why DM is almost universally rejected by ruling-class
hacks -- which is that DM is an "abomination" since it supposedly shows that all social
forms are subject to change, etc. But, if in reality ruling-class hacks reject
DM because it threatens their ideological belief that certain social forms are
unchangeable (or, which are
'natural'), then why didn't the Stalinist ruling-class reject it on similar
grounds? Why did they become its most enthusiastic supporters and proselytisers?

[Or, if you aren't a Trotskyist: why do "revisionist" OTs and NOTs also accept the
dialectic?]

The reason is pretty clear: DM allowed STDs
to justify any old line coming out of the Kremlin, and its opposite the very
next day!

[Again, if you are a Maoist or a Stalinist:
DM/MD allowed
OTs and NOTs to 'justify' their opposition to the genuinely socialist regime
in Stalin's Russia, ort Mao's China, etc., etc. -- since, once more, it can be used to rationalise
anything you like and its opposite.]

However, the answer to these awkward
questions isn't too difficult to find. It has been maintained here (especially in
Part One of this
Essay) that DM is the ideology of
substitutionist elements in the Marxist movement; that is, DM/MD is the
ideology of
petty-bourgeois and de-classé revolutionaries. If that
is so, one should expect to
find that only those ruling-classes (i.e., those comprising petty-bourgeois
professional revolutionaries, or the bureaucratic elements that have
descended with modification from them, or from other layers in society) --, which have themselves arisen as a
result of the degeneration of a proletarian revolution (etc.) --, would find
this theory conducive to their interests. As we have seen, that is precisely what we
have found.

In which case, other ruling-classes (i.e., those that
have no pretension, need or desire to substitute themselves for the
working-class) wouldn't want to adopt DM/MD -- since they have theories of their own
that 'justify' and/or rationalise their pre-eminent position, thank you very much.

In other words, DM/MD found their place in
STD-theory -- not because
that theory had become wooden and lifeless in their hands -- but because
it helped render the working class wooden and lifeless, therefore all the more easily substituted
for, and thus removed from its active
role in history.

Since MD is the theory that ideologically
'justifies' all forms of substitution (since it is capable of 'justifying'
anything), it is hardly
surprising that it fails to appeal to those not wishing to substitute
themselves for workers (i.e., the non-Stalinist bourgeoisie).

Now, if you are a
MIST or an STD reading this,
the answer is equally clear: one would expect Trotskyist 'wreckers' to adopt
dialectics, too. What better theory
is there if you want to argue that the former socialist states (the USSR,
Eastern Europe and Maoist China, for example) aren't permanent, but will disappear one day (as
indeed they have), than the dialectic?

"In its rational form it
is a scandal and an abomination to the bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire spokesmen, because it includes in its
positive understanding of what exists a simultaneous recognition of its
negation, its inevitable destruction; because it regards every historically
developed form as being in a fluid state, in motion, and therefore grasps
its transient aspect as well...." [Marx (1976),
p.103. Bold emphases added.]

It could be objected to this that STDs and
MISTs (NOTs and
OTs) also accept
HM. Hence, based on the above argument, HM would similarly be
compromised.

To be sure, the amalgamation of
MD
and HM has undoubtedly been to the
detriment of the latter. HM is only acceptable to Stalinists (for example) because it can
be rendered inoffensive by burying it under several layers of
incomprehensible
Hermetic jargon. HM is not an
inherently metaphysical theory: it is testable, it actually makes sense
(when those alien-class, Hegelian concepts have been completely excised), and it arises from and generalises
workers' experience (as Part One
of this Essay sought to show). HM only becomes metaphysical and wooden when combined
with DM, to form Dialectical
Mahogany.

When HM is distanced from DM (in the
suggested manner), it is a
scientific theory, of use to revolutionaries. That is why, of course, the
Stalinists (and, indeed, the rest) never in fact separated the two --, but, that
doesn't stop us genuine
materialists from doing so.50

On the other hand, if you aren't a Trotskyist
(i.e., if you are a Stalinist or a Maoist), the answer
is plain too: any petty-bourgeois element of the workers' movement -- be
it of the OT or the NOT persuasion -- will have perfectly good, class-based reasons to choose a
theory that rationalises their own substitution (or that of other groups) for the working class, analysed
earlier.

Perhaps now, dear reader, you too can see
how useful this theory is at explaining anything you like and its
opposite?

"The courts play a dual
role: enforcers for the ruling class -- as in so many cases when trade unionists
have been done in -- and in the main run of cases, where the interests of the
ruling class are not at stake, providing a tribunal that interprets and applies
the law to regulate relations between individuals within society. The law has
two natures (remember dialectics?)." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 03/02/2013.]

Two diametrically opposite conclusions based
on 'dialectics'.

Here is another:

"Because historically US Imperialism
has been very reactionary, as exemplified by the Vietnam war and much more,
there are now many people in the world who seem incapable of conceptualising
that the US could possibly do something progressive. It’s always possible for
these people to point to bad things that the US does -- there is no shortage of
examples.

"Maybe part of the problem is that
they have an ingrained black and white, non dialectic world view, which
implicitly denies the very possibility that the US could do something
progressive....

"I'm not saying
that thinking dialectically is a substitute for studying the details of
processes in detail -- including the details of what the Soviet Union became
historically and the details of what is happening in Iraq and the Middle East.
But that having the concept of dialectics (the coexistence of opposites in
things)might help prevent falling into the rigid black and white
thinking illustrated in the two examples above. If some people can't even
conceptualise that it might be possible for US Imperialism today to do something
progressive then no amount of detail is going to change their mind about Iraq.
Their thinking is dogmatically stuck at another level to do with their whole
world view. I'm arguing that studying dialectics is useful because it helps
us keep our minds open to these possibilities."
[Quoted from
here. Accessed 12/01/2014. Bold emphases added.]

This individual might just as well have
written the following:

"Because historically the Nazis/KKK
have been very reactionary, as exemplified by the Second World War/Concentration
Camps/US history and much more, there are now many people in the world who seem
incapable of conceptualising that they could possibly do something progressive.
It's always possible for these people to point to bad things that they do --
there is no shortage of examples.

"Maybe part of the problem is that
they have an ingrained black and white, non dialectic world view, which
implicitly denies the very possibility that the Nazis/KKK could do something
progressive."

"With some
cynicism
Shliapnikov told the Eleventh Party Congress: 'Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin] said
yesterday that the proletariat as a class, in the Marxian sense, did not exist.
Permit me to congratulate you on being the vanguard of a non-existing class.'

"Of course,
to a vulgar materialist, it sounds impossible to have a dictatorship of the
proletariat without the proletariat, like the smile of the Cheshire cat without
the cat itself. But one must remember that the ideological as well as the
political superstructure never reflect the material base directly and
immediately. Ideas have their own momentum. Usually in 'normal' times they are a
source of conservativism: long after people's material circumstances have
changed, they are still dominated by old ideas. However, this disjuncture
between the ideological superstructure and the economic base became a source of
strength to Bolshevism during the civil war." [Cliff (1990), p.189. Quotation
marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis
and link added.]

Hence, what would normally appear to be a
'contradiction in terms' -- i.e., "the dictatorship of the proletariat when
there is no proletariat" -- can be rationalised and 'justified' by the use of a
little dialectics (surely implied by Cliff's use of the term "vulgar materialist"
-- plainly set in opposition to "dialectical materialist").

DM is thus an almost infinitely pliable tool
for defending anything a party -- or even a particular individual -- feels
expedient.

Incidentally, this also explains why
revolutionaries almost universally accept DM, and why any attempt to criticise
it is resisted with no little vehemence.
For such comrades, DM works not only like a
drug consoling them for the repeated 'failure' of the class they champion, it
allows them to argue for whatever is opportune at the time, andit
rationalises their pre-eminent position in the revolutionary movement.

Hence, ditching
dialectics demotes dialecticians!

For Stalinists
in power, on the other hand, DM also functioned as a means of legitimisation and
ideological control, as a handy device for mystifying state power, and as a neat
way of rationalising the oppression and exploitation of workers (by the use of
cynically casuistical
'dialectical' arguments). The "wooden" nature of
the Stalinist dialectic is derived from the nature of the class that held (or
in some cases still holds) power; a dynamic dialectic is surplus to requirements if you already hold power.

On the other hand, 'lively' Trotskyist
dialectics arises from sections of Dialectical Marxism that need to generate quasi-religious fervour
as a form
of consolation for their own lack of power.

Finally, it isn't being suggested
here that the author of TAR, or any other NOT
(or OT, for that matter), is in any way
to be associated with the crimes of Stalinism -- far from it. As one comrade so
aptly put it a few years ago (Sheila McGregor, if memory serves me right): there
is a wall of blood separating Stalinism from Trotskyism.

And, I know which
side of that wall I'm on.

Nevertheless, TAR itself was clearly written from a
revolutionary perspective; that is its strength. Alas, that is also what
makes its author's acceptance of MD so regrettable.

If
DM/MD represents a serious inroad
of alien-class ideas into the revolutionary movement -- imported from the
"outside" by theorists who borrowed a hatful of confused concepts from Hegel (upside down,
or 'the right way up') --, then one should expect
it to exacerbate problems that revolutionaries inevitably
face in the course of struggle. Hence we should expect it to aggravate
sectarianism, fragmentation, substitutionism and mystification. We saw
earlier that professional revolutionaries
in general become Marxists for idiosyncratic, personal reasons (hence,
unlike workers, they aren't 'natural' materialists), which means that in
the hands of socialist prima donnas like these, DM is soon transformed into Dogmatic
Marxism.

To this end, one would expect DM to encourage
(1) A drift toward centrally-promulgated dogma, controlled top-down, (2) Obscure 'theological' disputation
and self-serving casuistry,
(3) The branding of rival tendencies 'heretical' (in
their interpretation of this or that obscure and incomprehensible dialectical thesis),
(4) The
emergence of 'dialectical-experts', who arrogate to themselves the semi-miraculous
ability of comprehending the secrets of Hegelian
esoterica,
and who them tell us that others do not, or cannot, "understand" dialectics -- or, indeed, that they
can't possibly master
Das Kapital until they have thoroughly studied and understood all of Hegel's Logic
(a claim, it is worth recalling, not even
Marx made about
his own work!).

In addition, one should expect DM-theorists
to use its ideas to defend counter-intuitive doctrines (i.e., those that "contradict
commonsense", or even common understanding)51 and to justify, on a post hoc basis,
hasty U-turns, inconsistent
tactical manoeuvres and off-the-cuff dialectical 'justifications' for one and
all.

Finally, one should expect dialecticians to use
this theory to convince recalcitrant workers that they are acting in their
best interest --, which the latter would, of course, appreciate if they
"understood" dialectics (but, alas, they don't). In short, one should expect DM to function as an
ideological'justification' for substitutionist thinking.

Every single one of the above
has been instantiated in the history of the various
revolutionary tendencies our movement has thrown up over the last hundred years
or so --
and
many times over.

From Lenin's claim that no one fully understands Marx's
Kapital who has not fully understood all of Hegel's Logic,
down through the wranglings between Lenin and Rosa Luxembourg,51a on to the attempt made
by Trotsky to justify the revolutionary defence of the
fSU as a
"degenerated
workers' state" (coupled with his scandalousdefence of Stalin's
invasion of Finland), down to the interminable use of 'dialectics' within
OTGs to
justify the latest tactical change (on the basis that such switches are
'dialectical' -- i.e., openly contradictory -- and that this is something
that recommends them), on to the haranguing of every other
revolutionary group for failing to see things the same way (in view of the fact
that everyone else adheres to an "abstract"/"wooden"/"formal" version of
the dialectic) --, to the use to which dialectical jargon is put in order to rationalise this or that
episode of sectarian point-scoring, and then on to the use of the very same theory
to 'justify' the centralisation of power in the former communist states on the
basis that everything is contradictory anyway, to the regular almost over-night
180 degree U-turns in policy -- and finally down to TAR
with an ill-advised use of the word "algebra" in its title.52

Although substitutionist tendencies within
Bolshevism act like the proverbial bacteria in a dead or diseased body, it is important to be aware of the class-, and ideological-source
of this infection: an ancient and well-established
ruling-class philosophical tradition
in the hands of petty-bourgeois theorists.

Given all that has gone before, unless we are
clear that DM has played a significant role in preventing Marxism
from being "seized by the masses" (on this see
Part One of this Essay, and Essay
Ten Part One) -- and hence in exacerbating
and prolonging the chronic
sickness of Dialectical Marxism itself -- unless we are clear about these things,
millions more dead workers are all we can ever expect from our efforts.

Followed, of course, by a Dead Movement --
DM: the final negation of this Hermetic
Dead-End.

01. Marx made plain
the influence of the Scottish School in the German Ideology (erroneously
calling it "English"):

"The French and the English, even if they have conceived
the relation of this fact with so-called history only in an extremely one-sided
fashion, particularly as long as they remained in the toils of political
ideology, have nevertheless made the first attempts to give the writing of
history a materialistic basis by being the first to write histories of civil
society, of commerce and industry." [MECW
5, p.42. Bold added.]

On this see Meek (1967), and Wood (1998,
1999) -- the latter of which underlines how influential Kant's work was in this area.

This is what I have posted at
RevLeft on this topic (slightly edited):

It is not I who
called them this (i.e., "The Scottish Historical Materialists"), but others, mainly Marx and Engels.

"Ronald Meek, 'The Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology' [1954; collected
in his Economics and Ideology and Other Essays, 1967.] Such luminaries as
Adam Ferguson and
Adam Smith. This influence was actually acknowledged. In The
German Ideology, right after announcing their theme that 'men be in a position
to live in order to be able to "make history", they say "The French and the
English, even if they have conceived the relation of this fact with so-called
history only in an extremely one-sided fashion, particularly as long as they
remained in the toils of political ideology, have nevertheless made the first
attempts to give the writing of history a materialistic basis by being the first
to write histories of civil society, of commerce and industry.'"] [Quoted from
here. Quotation marks
altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]

[I have to point out that the above link is hostile to Marx and Engels, but there is
little available on the internet at present on this topic that isn't hidden
behind a pay wall.]

Meek actually calls them the "Scottish Historical School" (p.35), but he
attributes this phrase to Roy Pascal (Communist Party member, friend of
Wittgenstein
and translator of TheGerman Ideology), who used it in his article
"Property and Society: The Scottish Historical School of the Eighteenth Century",
Modern Quarterly, March 1938.

The full passage reads:

"Since we are dealing with the Germans, who are devoid of premises, we must
begin by stating the first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all
history, the premise, namely, that men must be in a position to live in order to
be able to 'make history.' But life involves before everything else eating and
drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act
is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of
material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental
condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and
hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life. Even when the
sensuous world is reduced to a minimum, to a stick as with Saint Bruno [Bauer],
it presupposes the action of producing the stick. Therefore in any
interpretation of history one has first of all to observe this fundamental fact
in all its significance and all its implications and to accord it its due
importance. It is well known that the Germans have never done this, and they
have never, therefore, had an earthly basis for history and consequently never
an historian. The French and the English, even if they have conceived the
relation of this fact with so-called history only in an extremely one-sided
fashion, particularly as long as they remained in the toils of political
ideology, have nevertheless made the first attempts to give the writing of
history a materialistic basis by being the first to write histories of civil
society, of commerce and industry." [Quoted from
here.]

In the Poverty of Philosophy, Marx also wrote:

"Let us do him this justice:
Lemontey wittily exposed the unpleasant
consequences of the division of labour as it is constituted today, and
M.
Proudhon found nothing to add to it. But now that, through the fault of M.
Proudhon, we have been drawn into this question of priority, let us say again,
in passing, that long before M. Lemontey, and 17 years before Adam Smith, who
was a pupil of A. Ferguson, the last-named gave a clear exposition of the
subject in a chapter which deals specifically with the division of labour." [MECW
Volume 6, p.181. Spelling altered to conform to UK English.]

Marx refers to Ferguson repeatedly in his Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy (MECW
Volume 30, pp.264-306), as he does to others of
the same 'school' (Adam Smith and
Dugald Stuart) throughout this work.

He does so, too, in Volume One of Das Kapital -- MECW Volume 35, pp.133, 359, 366, 367. [He also refers to others of that
'school', e.g., Robertson, p.529, Stuart and Smith (however, the references to these two are
too numerous to list).]

Indeed, throughout Marx's entire works, the references to Smith and Stuart are
also too numerous to list.

Kant's influence is outlined in the following (I owe these references to Philip
Gasper):

01a. It has to be said
that this comment of mine has sunk without trace on the Internet. Comrades, it
seems, still prefer to advance Idealist explanations why we on the far-left are
continually in crisis. [This Essay even attempts to explain this phenomenon,
too!] After all, if your core theory [DM/MD] has been lifted from German
Idealism and Mystical Christianity, is it any wonder that comrades automatically
reach for an Idealist explanation for such things?

1.
Standard DM-accounts of the origins of materialism (in Ancient
Greece) are highly misleading. However, I don't propose to substantiate that contentious
allegation here.
Several comments will be
posted in Essay Twelve at a later date.

1a. It is worth pointing out that I am
employing the word
"sectarianism" in a wider sense than is generally the case in Marxist
circles -- it is more
akin to its use in describing the many and varied splits that occur within and
between religions. On that,
see here.

The Marxist.org glossary characterises "sectarianism" as
follows:

"Sectarianism
and Opportunism are the twin errors which may befall any organisation formed in
pursuit of some principle.

"The Sectarian
emphasises the absolute truth of its principle over any other, finds in every
small disagreement the seeds of fundamental difference, see[s] the most deadly foe
in the closest rival, puts purity of dogma over tactical advantage, refuses to
compromise or modify their aims and is proud of being against the stream. Simply
put, sectarianism is the breakdown of solidarity.

"The
Opportunist is always ready to adapt its principles to circumstances, minimises
the significance of internal disagreements, treats even opponents as 'the lesser
evil', puts tactical advantage ahead of being true to its principles, is too
ready to make compromises and is all too ready to follow the current of the
stream.

"Not
surprisingly, the sectarian or opportunist invariably repudiates being labelled
as such, and instead reverses the claim. Meanwhile, these labels are all too
easily thrown against minority positions in the attempt to invalidate their
opinions as 'anti-party', simply because they are different and challenging.

"Naturally,
real differences exist within groups and between different organisations.
When these are fundamental differences,
opposition and conflict is [sic] to be expected when a common course is attempted. The
trouble with sectarianism is that it behaves as if fundamental differences exist
when they do not; while opportunism actively ignores real differences. Thus,
when for example Anarchists and Socialists attempt a common action, one can
expect some areas of conflict.

"Some confusion
arises because the very nature of a Communist is to support
the working class as a whole, which includes parties, unions, organisations,
etc. Such a purpose is an arduous one and a fine line is sometimes walked
between helping increase class consciousness and the sectarian slide of
dictating to workers that their interests are not workers' interests! Thus,
mutual respect and thorough going [sic] solidarity are two steadfast principles of
real Communists.

"Sectarianism
and Opportunism exist in all things; but they are no more dominant in the
working class movement than they are in religious organisations or capitalist
governments. In the United States for example, the Republican and Democratic
parties have been in deeply sectarian battles over how best to rule a capitalist
government for over 100 years. While they see one another as fundamentally in
opposition (though we clearly know that they are not), they do have the
tolerance to the extent that they recognize the need for one another in order
for their government to survive. Thus, to eradicate sectarianism is impossible
(an attempt we saw in the Soviet Union, accomplished with the most brutal of
results), but to control it within certain boundaries can be a source of great
strength." [Quoted from
here.
Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Spelling
errors corrected.]

This is in fact much closer to the meaning of the term as I have used it
here, but it
still fails to come to grips with the reasons why Dialectical Marxism is so fragmentary.
It is surely just as afflicted in this regard as Christianity (and particularly
Protestantism) is --, indeed, as the above article concedes. According to
one
estimate, there are 34,000 different Christian sects on the planet! Well,
there might not be quite that many Marxist and/or far-left denominations, but
they certainly
number in the hundreds, possibly the thousands. After another 2000 years, if humanity
lasts that long, perhaps we will more closely rival the Christians in this
respect, too. Even so, per head of believers, Dialectical
Marxism is considerably worse off than Christianity. [On that, see
here.]

This phenomenon plainly requires a sociological explanation. The
beginnings of one will be advanced in this
Essay. Although I offer evidence and argument in support of what I have to say,
it will require much more substantiation before it becomes definitive.

It is also important to note at the start that I am not arguing
that everything that workers do or believe is above criticism, and that therefore
Marxists should tail-end the proletariat; quite the reverse, in fact. Hence,
the material presented here isn't meant to be an apology for
opportunism.
However, the politically backward
and uneven nature of most sections of the working class, and the need for a
Leninist Party have been studied in detail by other
Marxists -- whereas the sociological and ideological roots of sectarianism
haven't -- so, I will be concentrating on the latter, not the former, in this Essay.

[The former was in fact dealt with in Essay Nine Part One.
Also, see Note 13a, below.]

1b. Alas, this seems to be true of most
comrades with who I have debated this dogma on the Internet; few seem capable of
defending it, and, of those who are minimally proficient in this regard, none of them can do so to
any depth (and that even includes academic dialecticians, and some Marxist
professors!). All appear to have accepted large parts, or indeed all of DM/MD, uncritically.
[On that, see here.]

An excellent recent example of this can be
found
here (in the comments section at the end; look for the discussion between
the present author on a comrade called "Mick Travis".

"I have heard 'the dialectic' defined by way of the
alleged fact that however bleak the present conjuncture may seem (here again the
unreliable 'appearances'!), the working class will triumph 'in the end'. In such
assurances, the apparent defeat 'turns into is opposite' -- namely certain
victory!" [Rosenthal (1998), p.197, note 2.]

This agrees with my own experience.

Also compare this with the
following words taken from the Preface to the second edition of
RIRE:

"Ted Grant was an incorrigible optimist all his
life. Marxists are optimistic by their very nature because of two things: the
philosophy of dialectical materialism, and our faith in the working class
and the socialist future of humanity. Most people look only at the surface of
the events that shape their lives and determine their destiny. Dialectics
teaches one to look beyond the immediate, to penetrate beyond the appearance of
stability and calm, and to see the seething contradictions and ceaseless
movement that lies beneath the surface. The idea of constant change, in which
sooner or later everything changes into its opposite enables a Marxist to rise
above the immediate situation and to see the broader picture." [Quoted from
here. Bold emphases added.]

"'The dialectics of history, the general
crisis of capitalism, are far more powerful than all the bureaucrats. If the
crisis accelerates the death of the reformist forest, it will -- if
revolutionary socialists adopt a correct strategy and tactics -- accelerate the
growth of the green shoots of rank and file confidence, action and
organisation.'" [Birchall (2011), p.466, quoting Cliff from 1979. Bold emphasis
added.]

"In the evenings Vladimir Ilyich usually read books on
philosophy -- Hegel, Kant or the French materialists -- and when he grew very
tired,
Pushkin,
Lermontov or
Nekrasov."
[Krupskaya (1970),
p.40.]

This passage does not in fact support Ilyenkov's specific assertion that Lenin
studied Hegel's
Phenomenology of Spirit, and the "classics of world philosophy" (p.10).
At best it provides only weak support for his claim
that Lenin was interested in dialectics in general back then. Even so, this "interest" was
clearly re-kindled after his arrest and exile to Siberia. In which case, given the line
taken in this Essay, it is hardly surprising that Lenin looked for philosophical consolation
while incarcerated in Shushenskoe
in 1897. So, if anything, this confirms
the thesis being maintained here: that
philosophy and dialectics become important for (petty-bourgeois)
revolutionaries in times of disaster, defeat and set-back, whether or not these
were personal
or organisational.

It is worth adding that Krupskaya's memoires record both her own and
Lenin's continuing interest in philosophy:

"A volume entitled Studies in the Philosophy of
Marxism appeared in Russia containing essays by Bogdanov, Lunacharsky,
Bazarov, Suvorov, Berman, Yushkevich and Gelfand. These Studies were an
attempt to revise the materialist philosophy, the Marxist materialist conception
of the development of humanity, the conception of the class struggle.

"The new
philosophy was a loophole for a hodgepodge of mysticism. Decadent moods among
the intelligentsia during the years of reaction were favourable to the spread of
revisionism. Obviously the line had to be drawn.

"Ilyich had
always been interested in questions of philosophy. He had studied it closely in
exile, was familiar with everything that Marx, Engels and Plekhanov had written
in that field. He had studied Hegel, Feuerbach and Kant. While still in exile in
Siberia he had had heated discussions with comrades who inclined towards Kant,
he followed all that was written on the subject in the Neue Zeit, and
was on the whole fairly well-grounded in philosophy.

"The story of
his differences with Bogdanov was told by Ilyich in his letter of February 25 to
Gorky. Ilyich had read Bogdanov's book Fundamentals of the Historical
Conception of Nature in Siberian exile, but Bogdanov's position at the time
had been a stage in his transition to his later philosophic views. In 1903, when
Ilyich was working with Plekhanov, the latter had often criticized Bogdanov for
his philosophic opinions. Bogdanov's book Empiriomonism appeared in
1904, and Ilyich told Bogdanov outright that he considered Plekhanov's view
right and not his, Bogdanov's." [Ibid.,
pp.179-80. Italic emphases in the original.]

Krupskaya's comment that 'left'
intellectuals turn toward mysticism in periods of defeat and reaction further confirms the judgement expressed in this Essay.
However, it is also clear from what she says that Lenin became much more
focussed on Hegelian Philosophy after 1908 (here speaking of the period they
both spent in Berne in 1914-1915):

"While waging a
passionate struggle against the betrayal of the workers (sic) cause on the part of the
Second International, Ilyich at the same time began an article on 'Karl Marx'
for Granat's Encyclopaedic Dictionary as soon as we arrived in Berne. This
article, dealing with the teachings of Marx, opens with an outline of his
philosophy under two headings: 'Philosophic Materialism' and 'Dialectics,'
followed by an exposition of Marx's economic theory, in which he describes
Marx's approach to the question of socialism and the tactics of the class
struggle of the proletariat.

"Marx's
teaching was not usually presented in this way. In connection with the chapters
on philosophic materialism and dialectics, Ilyich began diligently to reread
Hegel and other philosophers, and kept up this study even after he had finished
the article. The object of his philosophic studies was to master the method of
transforming philosophy into a concrete guide to action. His brief remarks
on the dialectical approach to all phenomena made in 1921 during the trade-union
[sic] controversy with Trotsky and Bukharin best testify to the great benefit
which Ilyich derived in this respect from his philosophic studies begun upon his
arrival in Berne; they were a continuation of his philosophic studies of
1908-1909, when he had combatted (sic) the Machists.

"Struggle and
studies, study and research with Ilyich were always strongly linked together,
and closely bound up between themselves, although they may have appeared at
first sight to run in parallels." [Ibid.,
pp.295-96. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]

2a.Anderson went on to claim that Lenin's detailed study of Hegel informed his
classic work on Imperialism (i.e., Lenin (1975)), but he was forced to
admit the following:

"The relationship of the text of Lenin's Imperialism
to the Hegel Notebooks is not immediately apparent and must be excavated. First,
it must be said that unlike the Essay 'Karl Marx' (1914), for example, this book
does not have a section on dialectics or even one on philosophy. Nor does it
even mention the issue of dialectics...." [Anderson (1995), p.128. Quotation
marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Italic
emphasis in the original, bold emphasis added.]

This isn't surprising; as this Essay and Part One have shown, it
isn't possible to apply the dialectic in practice -- except, perhaps, to create
confusion and incomprehension. No wonder Lenin kept it well away from that
classic work.

Lars Lih's comments on this period in Lenin's life are also worth
reporting:

"Lenin's hectic activities during the first seven months
of the war bear little resemblance to the picture given us by writers who
imagine Lenin going through a period of agonising rethinking. According to these
writers, Lenin was utterly isolated politically, even from his closest allies;
he retired for a space from political activity in order to rethink the
foundations of Marxism; he then came up with his political programme only after
reading Hegel's Logic. In reality, Lenin had his political programme
ready literally from day one, and he immediately plunged into intense political
activity to publicise his standpoint and to ensure official party support, which
he received." [Lih (2014). Quoted from
here. Accessed 27/04/2014.]

It looks like this is yet another DM-fable we should now
consign to the dustbin of history.

As far as this claim of Anderson's is concerned:

"Once he arrived in Bern,
Lenin moved quickly in two seemingly contradictory directions: (1) he spent
long weeks in the library engaged in daily study of Hegel's writings, especially
the Science of Logic, writing hundreds of pages of notes on Hegel, and
(2)...he moved toward revolutionary defeatism...." [Anderson (1995), p.3.]

Another of Lih's remarks is worth reproducing:

"Two other candidates for a unifying theme are
'imperialism' and 'conversion of the imperialist war into a civil war'. As
important as these themes are, they do not cover all four levels of the scenario
of global revolutionary interaction. 'Revolutionary defeatism' is a non-starter
as a candidate, if only because the phrase cannot be found in Lenin." [Lih
(2014). Quoted from
here.] Accessed 27/04/2014.]

3.Hegel's
work
can itself be seen as a response to the failure of the
French
Revolution, prompting his retreat into "Dialectical Mysticism". There is
an admirably clear account of the demoralisation of
intellectuals that swept across Europe at the turn of the 18th
century -- in TAR itself
(pp.13-54)! Clearly, its author, John Rees, failed to notice the obvious
connection between Hegel's demoralisation and his subsequent search for consolation in the
sort of Christian Mysticism he so
effortlessly conjured out of
(literally) "Nothing",
later to be appropriated and given a full 360 degree
flip (not the reputed 180) by Marxist dialecticians suffering from the
same sort of malaise.

[TAR = The Algebra of Revolution, i.e.,
Rees (1998).]

Incidentally, the last
twenty or thirty years has witnessed a significant stampede 'back to Hegel'
among Academic Marxists (many of whom I have characterised as
High Church Dialecticians).
This is clearly connected to the change in the balance of class forces we have
witnessed internationally since the mid-, to late-1970s.
Chris Arthur (no doubt
inadvertently) plots its course in Arthur (2004), pp.1-16.

Academics, it seems, require a far 'superior' source of
consolation.

This 'revival' of (almost pure and unadulterated) Hermetic
Mysticism in the halls of Marxist academe has also found expression journals
like
Historical Materialism, Radical Philosophy
and (on-line) Cultural
Logic. It can also be seen in the recent foundation of the (insular) Marx &
Philosophy Society, as well as in (insular) books like Marx and
Contemporary Philosophy (i.e., Chitty and McIvor (2009)), which manage to
omit all mention of the vast bulk of Contemporary Philosophy (except,
there is one chapter devoted to
Analytical Marxism -- a now defunct 'tradition', which, even
at its 'height', was a back-water of
Analytic Philosophy
-- in the aforementioned book).

If these characters had set out to be totally irrelevant
(as far as much of Modern Philosophy is concerned) they have plainly succeeded
beyond their wildest dreams.

[One of the reasons for this lies in the fact that these
academics do not see to be able to write
a single clear sentence
(except, perhaps, in their job applications). But, just try telling any of them
this! (Of course, this is an exaggeration, but only a slight one.)]

Moreover, we encounter similar episodes
in
subsequent generations of revolutionaries, which reveal the historical and ideological connection between German Mysticism and
Dialectical Marxism itself -- that is, between the class-origin of
the DM-classicists
and their fondness for Traditional Philosophy,
particularly in times of defeat and retreat.

Indeed, and as a matter of
fact, the above classicists were drawn exclusively from petty-bourgeois and
de-classé circles. Of course, such a background is no defect in itself. But, the founders of
Marxism didn't live in air-tight containers, hermetically
sealed away from contemporary social and ideological influences; the latter clearly found
a sympathetic echo in the theoretical work of these pioneer dialecticians. [I
explain why that is so
later on in this Note.]

Hence, early DM-theorists -- living in a
semi-feudal Germany, which was intellectually dominated by Mysticism and Idealism -- found
themselves in a society with no developed or assertive working class
from which to learn. Workers
themselves couldn't provide a materialist counter-weight to the natural Idealist
inclinationsof
these intellectual pioneers. This meant that the theories
developed by the very first DM-classicists would automatically bend far too much
toward ideas that have always dominated
traditional theory and traditional theorists -- that is, toward the ruling-class forms-of-thought current in Germany and
Europe at the time. Workers in Germany and Russia were far too weak,
disorganised, and certainly too few in number in the nineteenth century to mount a significant challenge to the
confident ruling-classes of their day -- or, indeed, impact on the concepts that early
DM-theorists began to import into the movement, and then develop in the
direction of DM. [On this, see Note 13a2. Why I have used the
phrase "natural Idealist
inclinations" in relation to the DM-classicists will be explained presently.]

Moreover, ever-present disappointment with
the very class upon which the hopes of European and Russian radicals were pinned
must have been a constant factor influencing revolutionary thought during this
period. Repeatedly dashed expectations (that a revolutionary workers' movement would
emerge in mid-to-late 19th
century Europe) meant that the tendency to seek consolation in mystical philosophy clearly became
irresistible.

And this isn't mere speculation; we knowthatthis is
precisely what happened -- and is still happening. These facts are clear
enough from the biographies of European radicals (including those of Marx and
Engels, and later those of Lenin and Trotsky -- and even later, in the thoughts
and careers of
more recent
dialecticians).

An unshakable faith in workers' revolutionary potential
coupled with a belief in the proximity of the
revolution (which is clear for all to see, for example, in the Marx-Engels correspondence, and
elsewhere), alongside the certainty that there would be a terminal crisis of
Capitalism in the near future -- all these ideas had to face disconfirming
material reality many times over, month in, month out, decade
after decade.

[The effect on Marxists (including Marx, Engels and the other
classicists), interpreted as a form of 'scientific socialism' or even as a
'Critical Theory') of the varying economic fortunes of capitalism (in the 19th
and early 20th century) is traced rather well in Gouldner (1980), pp.32-150.
While there is much that I disagree with in Gouldner's analysis, he seems to me
to get this part of the story right.]

Naturally, a wide disparity between
theory and reality would require an explanation of some sort. If 'underlying
reality' differed so
markedly from 'appearances', then a theory that based itself precisely on this premise
-- which held that the surface view of things
is misleading and that underlying 'essence' is in fact the opposite of what it
seems to be
-- would appeal to anyone subject to such long-term disappointment and
demoralisation. And this would be all the more true of those who, because of their education
and socialisation, had had ruling-ideas already
planted in their heads, and which predisposed them to think this way about
high theory and low appearances.

Nevertheless, an explanation for failure and defeat is one
thing, but the enormity of the set-backs as they unfolded needed something a little
stronger; it required an industrial strength palliative.
Constantly dashed hopes would call for something far more soothing and
consoling, something absolutely reassuring. Those subject to permanent
disappointment would need a concentrated dose of a
potent
narcoleptic-- Dialectical Methadone --, a powerful ideological hit supplied by a doctrine
based on
the supposed 'contradiction' between 'appearance and reality'.

As Max Eastman
argued:

"Hegelism is
like a mental disease--youcan't know what it is until
you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it."

In this way, and to change the image, the
gravitational pull of the Black Whole of Hegelian Idealism would become
irresistible --, indeed, as Hegel himself foresaw:

"Every philosophy is
essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the
question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel(1999),
pp.154-55; §316.]

How else
are we to account for Engels's own 're-discovery' of dialectics
later in life, after a brief
youthful dalliance and subsequent rejection of it in the 1840s (alongside Marx)?
How else can we make sense of an analogous course taken by Lenin and Trotsky?

Admittedly, it isn't easy for Marxists to
accept the accuracy of this picture of the founders of our movement in view of the almost god-like stature these
comrades have assumed in their eyes. That, of course, is part of the problem!
It prevents revolutionaries thinking for themselves -- lest they be
branded "Revisionists!", or traitors to the cause -- guaranteeing that they
put a slavish adherence to
tradition
ahead of truth.

Nevertheless, this helps explain Engels's
later drift toward Hegelian Idealism. In his case, it accounts for his
use of Hegel's obscure concepts as a "master key"
to unlock nature's underlying
secrets -- which secrets govern all of material reality, for all of time
-- even while he
denied he was doing just
that!

This also helps account for the fact that
subsequent generations of revolutionaries have uncritically accepted a
demonstrably, if not lamentably weak
theory (whose flaws almost rival anything concocted by
David Icke), and one that
has presided over decades of constant failure.

These theorists and activists have
unfortunately displayed a level of gullibility that is hard to explain in any other way -- especially in view of the fact
that elsewhere they think and behave like
hard-headed materialists --, except we appeal to extra-logical factors, such
as their class origin and their need for some form of consolation in the face of long-term failure.

Since
these comrades were, and still are, subject to the sorts of pressures that weigh upon ordinary
human beings (in addition to those created by continually dashed hopes), the need to
invert material reality to fit an Ideal image of it clearly was, and still is, irresistible.
Decades of defeat and set-back, the almost total failure to win over even
a significant minority of the toiling masses, compounded by splits, betrayals,
sectarian in-fighting, bureaucratic inertia and implacable opposition from the
class enemy -- to say nothing of the other alienating forces at work in
capitalist society --, all these have taken (and are still taking) their toll on
generations of the very best revolutionaries.

DM has such
comrades in its grip because,
given their material and social circumstances, it encapsulates the way they
were socialised to see the world -- that is, as ultimately Ideal. As
children, reared in bourgeois or petty-bourgeois households and benefiting from
a superior education, they were taught to believe that there is an invisible world underlying
'appearances' that
is more real than the universe we see around us, and which is accessible to
thought alone. In this way, they had "ruling ideas"
installed in their brains from the get-go -- which thought-forms they later
imported into
the workers' movement. Hence, given their education,
such petty-bourgeois dialecticians consider there is absolutely nothing wrong with
traditional forms of a priorithesis-mongering. In fact,
given this background, nothing else would count as 'genuine Philosophy', since this
approach to High Theory has been a key
part of 'Western' (and 'Eastern') thought for
nigh on 2500 years.
This approach has such a grip on those in held its thrall that it is literally impossible
to shake them free (as Lenin
inadvertently admitted,
and as Marx himself pointed
out).

This means that DM-theorists find
they just can't
abandon -- they can't even bring themselves to think about abandoning -- the traditional idea that Marxism needs
a philosophy of some sort, and react with genuine shock, amazement and horror at anyone
who suggests
otherwise. Indeed,
they tend to defend this traditional belief with no little vehemence,
waxing
indignant (if not abusive) toward
anyone who thinks to question it.

As noted in
Essay Two, traditional thought finds
its most avid fans, and most resolute defenders, among those who claim
to be inveterate radicals.

[This topic will be explored at greater
length in Essays Three Part Six, Twelve
Part One, and Fourteen
Part Two, where the usual rationalisations dialecticians come up with to explain why
they
still think Marxism needs a philosophy (despite
Marx's
trenchant criticisms) will be
examined and then neutralised.]

Small wonder then that revolutionaries seek
reassurance in the idea that the most fundamental laws of 'Being' are on the
side of, or they are strongly pre-disposed toward, their cause. Once made, this
is an ideological
commitment to which such comrades desperately cling; few want to cut the cord
that binds them to their Dialectical Mother.

An emotive response is, of course, predictable
from
Cognitive Dissonance theory.
On that, see the classical account in Festinger
(1962), and Festinger et al (1956). See also Travis and Aronson (2008). There is a useful summary
here.
See also
here, which illustrates perhaps why so many comrades readily follow, and
rationalise, the 'Party Line'.

This unhealthy syndrome was dramatised a few
years ago in a 'true-to-life' film,
Promised A Miracle (1988), which told the story of an evangelical couple who believed
their diabetic son could be cured by faith alone, and thus rejected medical
attention and treatment. These two unfortunates continued to believe this
even as their son was dying. They accounted for his apparently worsening condition
by reasoning that the 'Devil' was falsely creating certain symptoms in the child to test their faith.
Even
after their son had died, they continued to believe he would come back to them
on the fourth day (to mimic the return of
Lazarus). The
more their beliefs were shown to be mistaken, the more powerfully they
believed the opposite.

In this case, their minds were clearly in the
grip of a pernicious form of Christian Mysticism, which convinced them to believe the
opposite of what their eyes told them. DM-fans likewise rely on a different, but
no less deleterious version of the same product (which, unsurprisingly, is based
on Hegel's brand of Christian and Hermetic Mysticism
(upside down, or the 'right way up')).

[In connection with the vehemently negative (if
not arrogantly dismissive) attitude dialecticians almost
invariably display toward any comrade who criticises or rejects DM/MD, it is also worth consulting the work of
Milton
Rokeach on "Open and Closed Minds" (which was itself partly based on
Adorno'sAuthoritarian Personality -- i.e., Adorno (1994)); cf., Rokeach (1960),
and Lalich (2004).]

To be sure, Trotsky did
mention DM in short articles and speeches in the 1920s (but even these date from a time
when he was being slowly elbowed out of the Party) -- for example,
Trotsky (1925) --, but his comments are few in number, rather brief and even
then they only seem to relate to Engels's First 'Law', the transformation of
Quantity into
Quality.

As noted earlier, this isn't to suggest that such comrades showed no interest at all in
dialectics in previous years, only that this 'theory' assumed a much more
prominent and important role in their lives and in their thought in periods of defeat and
set-back.

Moreover, as we will see, in the case
of the Stalinists and Maoists, this 'theory' also became a highly useful way of
rationalising (1) The party's autocratic domination over the working class, (2)
The
denial of inner-party democracy, (3) Regular, almost over-night about-turns in strategy and
tactics, and (4) Opportunistic class compromise.

7.The
former WRP were past masters in the art of
dialectical disputation. Long
articles by Gerry Healy (or one of his sidekicks) regularly regaled readers of
Newsline with detailed solutions to questions that constantly vex
ordinary workers, such as: Does motion precede matter, or does matter precede
motion?

Perhaps the "either-or of formal thinking" corrupted the minds of these
hardcore Hermeticists; surely the 'dialectical' answer is: both!

The WRP were fanatical defenders
of every last dot and comma of this 'theory' -- reaching an intensity of commitment and
fidelity that surely puts to shame
most MISTs --, along with practically everything Trotsky ever scribbled on the back of
a
cigarette packet.

[Proof? Read Healy (1982, 1990). Much of this material can now be accessed
here
(and at the link posted above).
If that doesn't work,
check this out.]

[MIST = Maoist
Dialectician.]

The depth of such dialectical devotion can be seen, for example, in the review of
Callinicos (1982)
that appeared in
Labour Review, Volume 6, number 1, May 1982, pp.40-48 [i.e., Pilling
(1982a)]. There, the reader will encounter the same tired old
clichés and articles of faith, dusted-off and given yet another airing almost
as if they had been freshly discovered the night before -- andas if
Callinicos hadn't heard them a million times already!

Now that the
Militant Tendency
has self-destructed it seems that up until his recent death
Ted Grant
had
inherited Healy's
Hermetic Halo (passed down to him after the death of the High Priest), and had
proudly donned the hallowed Dialectical Mantle as a purveyor of the latest
re-hash of DM, unfortunatelybased on ideas that were already
unscientific 200 years ago!

Alan Woods now
appears to be Grant's successor as
Dialectical Pontiff, ready and willing to pass the sacred word on to anyone ready to listen.

[Oddly enough, rather few workers so far...]

Scant consolation, too, one might feel, for the
abject failure of
'Entryism'
into the old UK Labour Party.

Anyway, these two comrades have written a book celebrating
the glitzy 'scientific' nature
of DM by, among other things, repackaging the mystical19th century
musings of Hegel andEngels, but, with no hint
of irony. The result? That monument to superficiality, Woods and Grant
(1995/2007).

[Cf., also Woods (ND). Some of their ideas have already been discussed
here,
here and
here; their work will become the
main topic of Essay Seven Part Two, to be published
at this site in the next few years.]

The
UK-SWP's
're-discovery' of DM is more recent, however. The line taken in Socialist
Review in the early 1980s, for example, was that while there might be a
dialectic operating in class society, there wasn't one at work in nature.

[That approach was a direct consequence of the influence of
Lukacs
and, to a lesser extent,
Althusser on leading SWP theorists at the time.]

"The
trouble with…[the 'negation of the negation' and a 'dialectics of nature' -- RL]
is that [they] oversimplif[y] and
mystif[y]…. To derive the laws of dialectics from inanimate nature leads to
denying the role of human agency in the historical process." [Birchall (1982),
pp.27-28.]

Even the late
Chris
Harman didn't think DM important enough to mention in print (as far as I
can determine) until the late 1980s. For instance, in his reply to an article written
by Alex Callinicos
[Callinicos (1983b)], Harman largely restricted his use of the term
"contradiction" to the following (in the midst of adding several
objections to Callinicos's view of
Althusser):

"'Turning
Hegel on his head', meant for Marx, freeing Hegel's attempts to integrate these
partial truths from the compromise with mysticism and religion. It meant
'reading Hegel' from the point of view of a new revolutionary class which had
nothing to fear from further historical change -- the working class.
Contradiction then becomes contradiction inside capitalist society. The
transformation of quantity into quality becomes the way in which bourgeois
society itself throws up new elements it can't control. The negation of the
negation becomes the creation of a class by capitalist production which is
driven to react back upon that production in a revolutionary way. The behaviour
of that class can only be understood on the basis of its conditioning within
capitalism, but then it comes to understand its conditioning and consciously to
transform both society and itself." [Harman (1983), pp.73-74.]

Harman was strangely silent about the 'dialectic'
in nature in this
article, as were Alex Callinicos and
Peter Binns in the same debate.
Indeed, Harman pointedly restricted dialectics to human social development (which is an indefensible
fall-back option, anyway, as I hope to show in a later Essay (until then, see
here)). [Cf.,
Callinicos (1983b) and
Binns (1982).]

This is quite inexplicable if we are now
supposed to accept the current UK-SWP line that
DM is central
to Marxist Philosophy. In fact, it is even more puzzling when we recall that Alex
Callinicos had been severely critical of several core DM-theses in the
book under review in the above debate. [Callinicos (1982)]. Comrades in the
UK-SWP might
not have noticed it, but
WRP writers certainly
did and laid
into Callinicos's 'anti-Marxist heresies' with no little vehemence,
as noted
above. But, why didn't Peter Binns or Chris Harman mention such glaring
dialectical infelicities in that debate?

Update: Since writing the above the first
series of International Socialism has been made available on the Internet
(here,
here and
here). Its content confirms my allegation that DM was totally absent from the
UK-SWP's theoretical discussions
between 1958 and 1978. In the second series (1978-onwards), DM didn't begin to
appear until the early 1990s. Admittedly, dialectics is mentioned now and
again, but it doesn't seem to have been applied to nature before the late
1980s. Indeed, in his early
history of the International Socialists, Ian Birchall mentions DM not
once. [The latter can be accessed
here and
here.]

In 1975, Peter Binns even wrote this:

"For Engels direct acquaintance with the proletariat
overtook his involvement with literature, religion and above all
philosophy. For Marx it was the other way about. His involvements with religion,
Hegel's idealism and
Feuerbach's materialism were ended before he
became a revolutionary socialist. Intellectually he had already settled accounts
with them in a series of savage critiques. He never needed to re-open these
questions again, unlike Engels who devoted later works of dubious merit like Anti-Dühring and Dialectics of Nature to
them." [Quoted from
here. Emphases and links added.]

Except in letters to the editor -- manyofwhichremainunpublished,anyway -- comments like this
would simply not appear in SWP publications these days!

And then in 1976, he added:

"But the dominant impression we get of Marx is of someone
who is so consciously trying to live down his Hegelian past that he 'bends the
stick' very much the other way -- endorsing Feuerbach's undialectical
materialism just because it provides a good (but temporary) stick to beat Hegel
with....

"But if class antagonisms are irreconcilable these
universal and supra-class rationalisations are quite empty, and must ultimately
lead us away from the task of helping the fight of the oppressed. That is why
from this point on Marx ceases to look for a philosophical base for proletarian
struggle. On the contrary it is proletarian struggle itself which will and must
provide the real and practical basis for the solution of the problems of ethics
and philosophy. What makes The Holy Family so interesting is
that it provides us with an answer which is an inconsistent mixture of both
the humanist and the class-struggle answer." [Quoted from
here. Emphases and link added.
This isn't a million miles
away from certain aspects
of my own
argument!]

Furthermore,
Tony Cliff's
earlier work
(as
far as I am aware -- but see below) doesn't mention DM, and his lengthy political biographies of
Lenin and Trotsky are deafeningly silent on this issue (again, see below).

In fact, as
this thread confirms (specifically
here
-- (added later: unfortunately, the site to which this connects is now using new software,
so direct links to
specific comments have been lost),
Cliff mentioned this execrable theory in print only 3 times in 60 years (and even
then only in passing)!

Update: Since writing the above, I have
discovered a handful of references to dialectics (the
MD version -- i.e., that which is at work
in human history -- but not DM --, applied to nature) in Cliff's classic book,
Cliff (1988); on that see here. Even so,
dialectical concepts are nowhere near as prominent in
his work as they are in,
say, Ted Grant's. [On the latter, see below.]
However, I am assured by older members of the UK-SWP that Cliff used to lecture
on DM in earlier decades -- but apparently he didn't think it important enough
to put any of his ideas on this in print. Be this as it may, the point is, of course, that DM only became an overt mantra in SWP
publications after 1985.

In addition, there is a passing mention of "dialectical
contradictions" in Cliff (1989), p.58. Birchall (2011) -- see next
paragraph -- records several other places where Cliff uses dialectical jargon.
Even so, he does precious little with it.

January 2012 Update: I have just received a copy of
Birchall (2012), which confirms my own impression of Cliff: "Cliff rarely
resorted to dialectical terminology...." (p.308).

However, Birchall adds this comment:

"At several Marxisms [the annual theoretical conference
organised by the SWP -- RL] there were heated debates about whether the laws of
dialectics applied to the material world or only to human history. Cliff never
expressed a view, though John Rees is confident that Cliff did believe there was
a dialectic in nature." [Birchall (2011), p.516.]

Even so, if Cliff did believe there was a dialectic
in nature, there would surely be more than one comrade who'd be able to
attest to that fact -- and someone, too, who has no axe to grind, like Rees.

[Nevertheless, Birchall's book confirms several of the allegations
advanced in this Essay (i.e., concerning the overt and covert hostility
and animosity that exists between
comrades -- even those who belong to the same party!): i.e., that prominent SWP comrades actually
viewed one another as enemies. [One only has to read, say, Higgins (1997) --
now Higgins (2011) -- to see this
allegation readily confirmed.
Higgins's comments about Chris Harman and Lindsey German, for example, are
hardly models of comradely banter. The break-up of Respect back in
2007/08 was not known for its moderatelanguage and temperate self-restraint,
either!
Any who doubt this should read, for instance, the comments sections over at
Socialist Unity,
now, back in 2007/08, or in the intervening years. The current crisis in the
UK-SWP also has its fair share of individuals (who are in fact still comrades)
who seem
quite
happy to bad-mouth, bully and malign one another. On this, see
here. The
same has happened in the
break-up of
the UK-SWP in early 2013.]

The same also applies to other prominent
UK-SWP theorists.
For example, and as far as I can ascertain,
Duncan Hallas
doesn't mention DM at all in
any of his
writings. This is equally strange if this theory is as 'central' to
UK-SWP thought as some would now have us believe. It is possible -- nay, it
is highly
likely -- that Hallas's solid
working class roots inured him to this mystical theory.

Correction: I have come across one mention of DM
in Hallas's writings --, in an article, oddly enough, about
sectarianism! Anyway, he is merely quoting Trotsky, and does nothing with
the idea himself.

The change in line was heralded by two short
articles; one was written by Chris Harman -- which appeared in
Socialist Review in 1988 [Cf., Harman (1988)]; the other was by
John Molyneux,
which appeared in Socialist Worker (see below).

[Update:
Apparently, the US and UK wings of the ISO/IST are
now on friendlier terms! The ISO's stance on the latest UK-SWP crisis might put
a stop to that -- on that, see
here,
here, and
here. Even so, some of the background to the above expulsion is outlined
here.]

See also
my
letter to the
International Socialist Review, which was written in response to an
article by Brian
Jones. [Jones
(2008)]. Comrade Jones attempted to mount a surprisingly weak and rather superficial
defence of dialectics, to which I have replied
here. [Readers need to be made aware of the fact that that response was based on a
copy of comrade Jones's reply to me, posted at RevLeft by another
comrade who made several typing errors in reproducing it. A more considered version of my reply
has now been published
here.] A similar letter sent to Socialist Review
by a supporter of this site wasn't published. It can be accessed
here.

Even Alex Callinicos has softened his
anti-DM stance of late. [Callinicos (1998) and (2006); on the latter, see
here.] Before this he had been openly
critical of this theory; see, for example, Callinicos (1976), pp.11-29; (1978),
pp.135-84; (1982), pp.55, 112-19; (1983a), pp.54-56, 61-62; (1987), pp.52-53;
(1989a), pp.2-5.

It is quite clear that the downturn in the
movement since the 1970s, and particularly after the defeat of the UK miners in
1985, meant that the above comrades began to feel a pressing need to enrol
themselves on a sufficiently powerful Dialectical Methadone
programme.

Mercifully, DM has yet to appear
in Socialist Worker on a regular basis. As far as I am aware, it has only
featured once in the paperin the last 27 years -- in an article
written by John Molyneux (the reference
for which I have unfortunately lost, although Eric Petersen gives it as January 1984)
-- subsequently reprinted in Molyneux (1987), pp.49-51. [Cf., Petersen (1994),
p.158. Petersen also references a letter sent to Socialist Review, written by a
comrade and old friend of mine, Paul Jakubovic, in response to Harman's
article, pp.160-61. (Cf., John Rees's dismissive 'response' can be found in Rees (1990),
p.134, note 3.)]

Given the fact that workers are 'supposed' to
assent to DM readily when the encounter it, or they are said to use
its concepts unwittingly/"unconsciously" all the time -- according to
Trotsky --, this omission is
highly puzzling, especially if DM is as central to revolutionary practice
and theory
as SWP-dialecticians would now have us believe. Why hasn't Socialist Worker
assumed the Dialectical Mantle once worn so proudly by
Gerry Healy and Newsline?

The answer isn't difficult to
work out. The editors of Socialist Worker aren't idiots, unlike their
counterparts at Newsline. They surely know that DM is a
complete turn-off for workers. Even Socialist Review
largely ignores this supposedly central tenet of Marxism -- probably for the same reason.
[However, in November 2008, Socialist Review published an article on
"Quantity and Quality" by John Rees (i.e., Rees (2008)). More about that later.]
But, if DM is to be brought to workers, how might this be achieved if the
revolutionary press (in the shape of, say, Socialist Worker) totally ignores
it? It is difficult to see how DM could ever "seize the
masses" if their paper omits all mention of it.

Update September 2012:
In view of the recent crisis that swept over the SWP, followed by its
haemorrhaging of members, one should expect Dialectical Mysticism to make a
strong comeback in UK-SWP publications. And that is exactly what we find in the
shape of John Molyneux's latest book -- The Point Is To Change It, An
Introduction To Marxist Philosophy --
alongside (1) An article in a recent edition of
Socialist Worker, and (2) Two much longer articles in International
Socialism,
Royle (2014), and
Sullivan (2015). Molyneux's book also received a favourable (and predictably
uncritical) response in
Socialist Review.

Alas, Molyneux's work makes all the usual mistakes (several
of which have already been pointed out to him) -- indeed, as do the two articles
in International Socialism -- a supporter of this site
has sent letters to the editors of both of these SWP publications on this.
However, there
isn't a cat-in-the-hot-place's chance
they will be published. Be this as it may, all three are classic examples of
what I have called 'Mickey
Mouse Science'.

[The letters have now been posted
here. I will also write a longer reply to
Molyneux's book in a separate Essay sometime in 2015. In the meantime, see my comments over at
Molyneux' blog -- at the foot of the page -- and
here.]

Clearly, the
failure of the UK-SWP to make much headway in the
current climate -- with millions on the streets across Europe (and elsewhere)
fighting the cuts -- has necessitated another shot of Dialectical Cocaine. Here
is why:

"The 'strategic perplexity' of the left
confronted with the gravest crisis of capitalism in generations has been hard to
miss. Social democracy continues down the road of social liberalism. The
far-left has struggled to take advantage of ruling class disarray. Radical left
formations have tended to stagnate at best." [Seymour
(2012), p.191. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted
at this site.]

"There is no question
that the global recession on the back of the constant 'war on terror'
has produced a radicalisation. Anti-capitalism is widespread. Evidence
comes from the sheer scale of popular mobilisations over the last
decade. Once, achieving a demonstration of 100,000 in Britain was
regarded as an immense achievement. When grizzled lefties looked back on
the demo of that size against the Vietnam War in October 1968, tears
welled in their eyes. Now a London demo has to be counted in hundreds of
thousands, to be a success.

"Yet this
radicalisation, in Britain at least, has not been accompanied by the
growth of any of the political currents which you would expect to
benefit from this anti-capitalism. And I mean any, even those who reject
the label 'Party'.

"The situation the
left finds itself in is worse than when it entered the new century....

"No other period of
radicalisation in British history has experienced this lack of any
formal political expression. It's not that people opposing austerity,
war and much else are without politics. They are busy devouring
articles, books, online videos and much else." [Quoted from
here. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted
at this site.]

In early March 2013, the
UK-SWP called a Special Conference to discuss the growing internal crisis in the
party. In the Pre-Conference Bulletin, the Central Committee had this to say:

"In our view, some of the issues are
the result of frustration felt across the party due to the failure of struggle
to break through after 2011. Indeed, the wider problem of the downturn in
industrial struggle that took place several decades ago, and which has not
subsequently been wholly reversed, despite many hopeful signs, is implicated in
the internal crises the party has faced since 2007.

"Three splits -- first, by a very
small group of comrades who sided with George Galloway during the
Respect crisis; second, by the group that broke away to form
Counterfire; third by
the group concentrated in Glasgow who broke to form the
ISG --
reflected, in different ways, attempts to find shortcuts to overcome the low
level of workers' struggle.

"Forms of voluntarism, whether
expressed through electoral shortcuts, movementism, attempts to substitute
students, unemployed youth and a supposed 'precariat'
for workers, and so on, are a price we have paid for a long period of a
generally low level of class struggle. The revival of ideological radicalism, in
a context where organisations orientated on workers and socialism are especially
weak, and the halting pattern of one-day strikes, can reinforce these
tendencies." [Quoted from
here, p.7.
This links to a PDF; accessed 06/03/2103. Quotation marks
altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Links added.]

However, they forgot to
mention, this latest set of reverses has required yet another hit of Dialectical
Dope -- chief among which is Molyneux (2012).

International Socialism
now appears to be the only UK-SWP publication 'radical' enough to push DM/MD-concepts
on a regular basis.
Admittedly, few workers read this otherwise excellent journal -- and that
probably explains why the editors find they can push this theory.

In addition, meetings at Marxism (the
annual SWP theoretical conference) regularly discuss DM/MD
(although only a couple of hours over four or five days each year is devoted to
this allegedly core theory). [Some of this material can be accessed
here,
although it now features on the
UK-SWP's TV
Channel over at YouTube. Predictably, the 'dialectical' videos attract few
hits. Not much 'seizing of the masses' going on here -- and, on a site that attracts
tens of millions of hits a day! (A report concerning the discussion of dialectics at Marxism 2007
can be found here.)]

This is reasonably easy to explain: it is probably
a (rather weak)
gesture toward orthodoxy. However, there are relatively few such meetings
(and, as noted above, the videos on dialectics attract very few hits); their content relates to little of the political
content of other meetings
(which, given the criticisms advanced
in this Essay, and in
Part One, isn't all that surprising; but given the alleged centrality of
this theory, it is surprising).

Nevertheless, the contrary view
(i.e., anti-dialectics) certainly isn't allowed
adequate time to mount an effective case for the prosecution (or any at all).

At Marxism 1990, in separate meetings on dialectics I was given two,
three minute impromptu slots in the discussion period at the end. It is only possible to make highly superficial
points in such short intervals, which, because they challenge fundamental
beliefs, are quite easy to dismiss. However, the level of argument advanced in response to
what I had to say
was quite lamentable; in fact it was difficult to believe that one comrade (Seth
Harman) had listened to a word I had uttered, given the irrelevant comments he
made. Indeed, after the meeting had finished, I put him on the spot
by shouting across the auditorium: "Hey, Seth! Is that the best you can do?"

The main speaker (John Molyneux) even took it upon himself to interrupt me
several times at the beginning of my first three minute spell, until I silenced him with a
joke. In my opening remarks, I was in the middle of saying that my attack on DM
was not an attack onHM,
when he interjected loudly over the
microphone that it was. I denied it. He re-asserted it. I denied it again. He
re-asserted it once more. I then turned to the audience and said "There you go,
comrades, a contradiction within the first thirty seconds!" The subsequent
laughter drowned out any further response John thought to make.

However, the reception I received from the audience for my brief intervention (a
loud and prolonged applause --, indeed, upon request, they even voted for me to be
given an extra minute to speak) indicated that there were many comrades in the SWP who
held similar views to mine. There is no
way I'd experience such a reception these days.

After the meeting, John Molyneux put me on the spot by
asking me which classic of revolutionary theory had been written by an anti-dialectician,
and to what successes could anti-dialecticians point. I made a lame reference to Jerry Cohen's book (Karl
Marx's Theory of History, A Defence), which he found easy to ridicule.
However, it later occurred to me that on this basis we should accept the
validity of Newton's mystical
writings since his scientific work was highly successful. Indeed, I should have put
him on the defensive by asking him for a currently successful example of
a dialectically-inspired socialist state (or even movement!). Indeed,as Rosa's
Essays show,
Dialectical Marxism is now almost synonymous with failure. Moreover, the vast
majority of Marxist classics ignore DM, while those that don't are distinctly
inferior works. [On this, see
Note 28 and
Note 30 --
RL.]

My second intervention the next day -- in a meeting given by
John Rees -- was far less successful.
In fact, I was only able to make a few superficial points since I was keen not
to repeat what I had said the day before. However, I did manage to tell John that,
in his articles on dialectics inInternational Socialism,
he had managed to publish several whoppers
about formal logic. Given the fact that he later repeated these howlers in TAR,
my comments plainly failed even to go in one ear!

In the refectory after the second meeting, I engaged in
debate with Andy Wilson (who is now no longer in the SWP, but manages to sniff
around its periphery on several internet blogs/boards -- and now in
International Socialism itself (IS
133, in fact) -- who attempted unsuccessfully to explain what a
'dialectical contradiction' is. His example (that the revolutionary party both
is and is not a part of the working class) was easy to dispose of as an
undischarged ambiguity. That is, the revolutionary party is part of the working
class in so far as..., while it isn't part of the working class in so far as....
(Readers can fill in the blanks according to their own theory of the party.) But
this is no more a contradiction, let alone a 'dialectical contradiction', than
this would be: Das Kapital is part of my personal
library and not part of my personal library. It is part of my library in so far
as I have a copy of the book on my shelves. But, it isn't part of my library in so far as the actual book Marx wrote (in
his own hand-writing) is not on my shelves. [Compare this with the
examples Rosa gives of ambiguous pseudo-contradictions in
Essay
Five.]

Incidentally, Andy Wilson's 'dialectical manners' have now
degenerated to such an extent that the only remarks he can bring himself to post about Rosa's
ideas in the comments sections of the various blogs and internet sites he frequents (until
recently, particularly Socialist Unity)
are as inane as they are abusive. [On this, follow, for example, the links to a
debate at the aforementioned site given here and
here. (Andy used to post
there as 'Karen Elliott'. This isn't to 'out' his identity, since he's
openly admitted this on-line.) In the current crisis in the UK-SWP, Wilson is
now apparently part of the
Democratic Renewal Platform,
and the
International Socialist Network.]

Of late (i.e., circa 2003-11), even
International Socialism has dropped this 'hot' topic (except for
this
article written by Chris Harman in his review of a recent book by Alex Callinicos,
i.e., Harman (2007a), and possibly
this
one, too -- i.e., Harman (2007b)).

This is probably because of the
international situation brought on by a resurgence of US and UK Imperialism, and
the massive anti-war response this has
provoked across the globe. It isn't easy to argue with newly radicalised youth that "Being is identical with
but at the same time different from Nothing, the contradiction resolved in
Becoming..." and hope to appear either relevant or sane!

One should be able to predict that, as the recent wave of
radicalisation declines, and as the fortunes of recently fragmented
Respect and the hastily-formed (and then dissolved) Left List
continue to fade, dialectics should rear its ugly head in SWP publications
again. The above reappearance in
International Socialism (and those recorded below), alongside Molyneux
(2912), are perhaps an early
indication of this
trend.

Update, Winter 2008: Sure enough, of late dialectics has re-surfaced
in
Socialist Worker! (The details can be found here.)
Once more, as noted above, this is probably because
UK-SWP has not made a significant political break-through, despite their prominent role in
the UK Anti-war movement, and because the latter is now in steep decline.

Idealism, too -- evidenced by
this example of the
'triumph of the will'
-- is once more on in the ascendancy, it seems!

[On that, see the discussion
here,
where normally sane and sober comrades appear happy to eulogise the sort of stunts
we usually associate with anarchists! (Alas, this link no longer works! Some of
that discussion can be accessed
here.)]

Finally, we can see how important MD/DM are when it comes to interfacing with the general public, on-line.
On the
Theory page of
the UK-SWP's site, dialectics receives not one mention.
HM, on the other hand,
is present there in all its glory. [An indirect, but inadvertent admission, that DM/MD
is irrelevant to active Marxists -- indeed, as
we saw was the case in 1917.]

Update 09/02/2013:
The above crisis has deepened alarmingly since the
SWP's NC met over the weekend of the 2nd and 3rd of February, to such an
extent that leading members of the party have now declared a faction in open
defiance of (some interpretations of) the party's constitution. On that see
here and
here. [The first of these links to a PDF.] The CC has now relented and agreed to call a
special conference on March 10th to discuss this crisis -- a crisis which they
mysteriously failed to notice a week or so earlier!

Update 16/02/2013: I have now added
several comments about the above crisis in the UK-SWP,
here,
here, and
here.
The Special Pre-Conference Bulletin can be accessed
here.

Update 10/03/2013: The Special
Conference met today and has
voted to back the CC's line. This means that widely held and deeply felt concerns
in the party (in relation to what might very well have amounted to the rape and
sexual abuse of a female comrade -- possibly two) have now been swept under the carpet. Doubtless this will lead to a mass exodus from the
SWP,
seriously weakening the revolutionary left in the UK. This mass exodus is also
likely to be repeated right across the
IST, which will thus have the same effect internationally. So, here we have
yet another self-inflicted wound -- and this time it could prove
to be fatal.

[I am recording some of these resignations,
and the reasons given for them,
in
Appendix G.]

Update 10/07/2013: The SWP break-away
'faction' -- the IS Network [ISN] --
are now experiencing the tensions to which I have
alluded
above, between centralisation and democracy in an organisation comprised
largely of non-workers. This latest 'difficulty' revolves around the thorny
question whether or not the ISN should appoint a paid employee! Make a
note of the vitriolic tone and the threats to "leave" if this move is
implemented. Reports suggest they have already lost half their members (and
these are mainly younger comrades).

As I have
explained: fragmentation is an
inherent feature of this corner of the radical market. That is why such
parties in the end err on the side of anti-democratic centralisation, and
then face damaging splits. Even if they don't do this, they split, anyway!

Indeed, if
this article is to be believed, the ISN might be about to fragment. [Ignore
the comment that Richard Seymour is a 'reformist'. Nothing could be further from
the truth!]

Update 26/01/2014: As
predicted, the ISN has
suffered its most serious split since it was formed. Those who have departed
have reported the same sort of 'difficulties' we have seen are endemic on the
far-left:

"At issue here is not just the conduct or content of
recent discussions or even the political direction of the ISN, but the question
of making a habitable culture of discussion on the Left. When some of us
recently wrote an article criticising a politics of anathema within the ISN, we
were derided by opponents who denied any such thing exists. Unfortunately, it
does. One SC [Steering Committee? -- RL] member has recently publicly insisted
that 'no one is being targeted personally'. The very same SC member recently
seconded a denouncement on Facebook, by another SC member, of several of us as
'arrogant fucks' and 'bad rubbish' to whom 'good riddance'. One leading member
expressed a desire on Facebook to strangle one of us -- referring to her as a
'nauseating tosser' -- and not one of the SC members to whom she said this
suggested it was an inappropriate comment to make. Several SC members
openly expressed their agreement with a status referring to us as
'parasites'. Another SC member wrote 'they should count themselves lucky they
haven't been expelled' -- particularly galling to two of the 'Facebook Four'
involved in our thread. There are further examples, but this culture is one in
which we can no longer work: we also would like comrades to consider whether
left organisations can hope to attract a new generation of members if they treat
each other in this way.

"We look forward to working in a left culture that has
ended certain practices inherited from the SWP. These include moralistic
browbeating; the implicit claim that various controversial topics are
inappropriate for discussion; that certain comrades can not be argued with on
them; and that dissenters from these nostrums deserve to be attacked in
personalised terms. We know many ISN members look forward to this with similar
enthusiasm." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 26/01/2014.]

In fact, my comments at the ISN's website are
now being routinely deleted (even when they aren't about dialectics), and I have been barred from posting there any more! The
ISN seems to have inherited the recently-incipient Stalinism of the old UK-SWP!

Update 30/10/2013: It looks
like the party is set to fragment yet again. Several SWP members have asked for
a
censored pre-conference Bulletin article (which is highly critical of the
SWP-CC's handling of the recent rape accusations debacle) to be published in
full at the Socialist Unity website (a site that is openly hostile to the
SWP and its politics), rather than at the
SWP-break-away ISN site, or even at the SWP's own
internal
faction site. This is almost guaranteed to lead to their expulsion, which
will in all likelihood be followed by another mass exodus.

Even more shocking, this was reported to have
been said at the conference:

"We aren't rape apologists
unless we believe that women always tell the truth -- and guess what, some women
and children lie." [Quoted from
here. Several other sources on Twitter confirmed this.]

And, what is worse, it received a round of
applause!

Update 30/12/2013: Indeed,
there has now been a
mass resignation of 165 comrades from the SWP.

Update 03/01/2014:
As expected, the ISN, the breakaway group
formed by ex-SWP-ers, is now experiencing the centrifugal forces that afflict
all Dialectical Marxist tendencies:

"In the early days of the ISN, and now again among the
recent SWP leavers, there is the idea that we will clarify our ideas over time
-- that whatever we set up, the most important question is not organisational
but the politics we share. Well, yes and no. While we may all be on a journey
towards clarity, we are also travelling on different trajectories. In the ISN,
some have become more orthodox Trotskyist, some more left communist, some more
anarchist. Some see the best hope as the construction of a new approach fit for
2013, based on contemporary theoretical work instead of a return to any
particular canon. (Yes, I see myself in the latter group.) As we followed the
logic of our new courses, the political space between us has widened....

"It seems more likely than not that these informal
groupings will continue to develop their politics in different ways. That
dynamic could, if we are not careful, see the various ex-SWP groupings split
into a dozen shards within a few years. (Look at the fate of the fragments of
the Workers Revolutionary Party to see where this can end....)" [Quoted from
here.]

Of course, that hasn't stopped those
belonging to the several fragments that have emerged as a result of this crisis
from theorising what went wrong, but other than reaching for rather desperate
reasons why (ranging from
blaming the CC to blaming 'human fallibility'), no one has even so much as
attempted to develop a historical materialist reason why this always
happens to Dialectical and petty-bourgeois Marxists.

From this, one gets the distinct impression
that many ex-SWP-ers are simply running around like headless chickens, afraid to
apply Marxism to Marxism itself!

However, to those left inside the SWP, this
will just confirm the impression that it is little other than a political
desert outside their party, which will further accelerate its degeneration
into a cult.

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

Update 20/03/2013:
A series of short essays dealing with this crisis, and how it developed -- written
by someone whose opinion I trust -- is now being posted
here,
here,
here, and
here.

9.
This isn't strictly true; since writing this I have come across somewhat
similar (but far less detailed) conclusions in Max Eastman's work. Eric Petersen
has also made a similar point; cf., Petersen (1994).

9a. "What mistakes?", I hear someone ask.
Well, perhaps that word is far too mild; "culpable blunders" and/or "dogmatic
blindness" might be more apposite. What these are will be detailed
below, and in Essay Ten
Part One.

10.I do not propose to document the history
of every attempt made by STDs and
OTs to invert reality to accommodate
theory (or to save face) -- but, see below.

Fortunately, the UK-SWP, up
until recently(!), was easily the most honest and self-critical tendency in this
tradition (no sarcasm intended -- on this see Note 16 for an example of how honest
they are; I can't think of any other Marxist party that openly admits to such
inner-party disputes). Certainly, they used to be willing to acknowledge at
least some of their errors. [Cf., Cliff (1999 and
2000).]

Whether this means that the DM-credo will ever be
abandoned is anyone's guess -- but I, for one, will not be holding my breath.

12.
As noted above, with respect to
OTs, this is well illustrated
in Cliff (1999, 2000). A recent and excellent example of a
MIST with his/her head
buried deep
in sand can be found
here.

Nevertheless, the following represent a few of the literally thousands of on-line references to this 'theory' (and
its truly miraculous powers) from various wings of Dialectical Marxism
that claim to represent the 'True Gospel':

[Unfortunately, one or two of the above links
are now dead, and several have changed since this was originally written. I have
listed a dozen or so extra examples in
Essay Two.]

Each of these, of course, has the correct, 'orthodox' dialectical line on everything from the Big Bang to the price of
pork.

[OT = Orthodox
Trotskyist.]

With so many parties and tendencies 'testing'
their theories in practice (but,
oddly enough
ignoring
the
results), and deciding, in their own case, they're
the non-existent deity's gift to success (whereas the rest are all abject,
anti-dialectical flops), one would be forgiven for concluding there ought to be a few more worker's states on the
planet than there appear to be right now -- which was zero at the last count.

13.
Admittedly, this isn't the first time this particular accusation has been
levelled against Marxist revolutionaries. However, on this occasion it is worth
highlighting the following significant differences:

(1) It is being claimed here that only DM (not
HM) functions in this way.

(2)
DIMisn't a
religion; it merely operates in a way that makes it analogous to
one. Just as religious
alienation finds theoretical expression in Theology, so revolutionary political
alienation finds it in MD/DM.

(3) There are other respects
in which DM is analogous to Theology: (a) Both depend on or utilise
metaphysical theses; (b) Both
hold on to dogma that no one dare question, and which none can explain; (c) Both
possess Doctors of Divinity/Dialectics who not only help preserve the faith, but
who are also skilled at complex sectarian disputation; (d) Both
offer their acolytes some form of consolation; (e) Both dull the critical faculties by
means of mantra-like liturgies; (f)
Both have their sacred books.

(4) These accusations aren't being
advanced by an enemy of Marxism, but by a comrade with serious concerns
about the influence such boss-class ideas have had on our movement, and which
will only help guarantee that the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism will
extend into this new century, and perhaps beyond (if humanity survives that
long). The aim of this
critique isn't, therefore, to rubbish Marxism, but help make it more
successful.

However, since religious belief will only
disappear if its causes (i.e., class-induced alienation) are eliminated,
the hold this mystical creed has on the majority of dialectically-distracted comrades
will diminish only when the working-class succeed in changing society for
them.

Dialecticians will thus have to have their
heads extracted from the mystical sands in which they have been inserted by
means of a successful workers' revolution. My Essays can no more do this than we can hope
simply to
argue the god-botherers of this world out of their faith. This means that, just like religionists,
dialecticians
will require a
very real, materialist cure -- not an Ideal one -- provided by the revolutionary
proletariat. So,
these Essays will only make sense to such comrades when the
Owl of
Minerva has finally been shot, plucked and stuffed by workers' soviets --
should this ever come to pass.

Nothing short of this will
end the alienation that induces comrades to lose themselves in dialectical
daydreams. Of course, if the above never comes to pass, dialectical mystics will
doubtless continue to practice their
ostrich impressions right up until the point where the planet finally sinks into
barbarism, or worse. These Essays won't shift them in the least, for such
comrades cling to dialectics non-rationally. [On that, see
here,
here,here, and Note 13a2.]

13a00.
I hasten to add that I don't think revolutionary socialism is a lost cause;
quite the reverse, in fact. But, if we retain a commitment to DM, it could very
well turn out to be just that -- unless, of course, the working class rescue
DIMs
from themselves. [On that, see Note 13a2.]

13a0.
This might sound rather
Machiavellian, and in some sense it is. Nevertheless, anyone who finds this
comment unacceptable is encouraged to shelve their qualms until
later on in this
Essay, where I seek to substantiate these serious allegations.

[It is also worth
pointing out that the basis for advancing such claims was laid down in Essay Nine
Part One.]

13a01.
Of course, there are exceptions to these sweeping statements; but, they are just
that, exceptions.

13a1.
Since writing this I have come across a much more detailed analysis of
petty-bourgeois intellectuals in Löwy (1979), pp.15-90. I will add some comments on this book to a later
re-write of this Essay.

The founders of this quasi-religion
[DM] weren't workers; they came from a class
that educated their children in the Classics, the Bible, and Philosophy. This tradition
taught that behind appearances there lies a 'hidden world', accessible to thought
alone, which is more real than the material universe we see around us.

This way of viewing things was concocted by ideologues of the ruling-class. They invented it because if you belong to, benefit from
or help run a society which is based on gross inequality, oppression and
exploitation, you can keep order in several ways.

The first and most obvious way is through violence. This will work for a time,
but it's not only fraught with danger, it is costly and it stifles innovation
(among other things).

Another way is to win over the majority (or, at least, a significant
section of 'opinion formers' (bureaucrats, judges, bishops, 'intellectuals', philosophers, teachers, administrators,
editors, etc.)
to the view that the present order either: (1) Works for their benefit, (2) Defends 'civilised
values', (3) Is ordained of the 'gods', or (4) Is 'natural' and so can't be
fought, reformed or negotiated with.

Hence, a world-view that rationalises one or more of the above is necessary for the ruling-class to carry on ruling in the
same old way. While the content of ruling-class thought may have changed with
each change in the mode of production, its form has remained largely the same
for thousands of years: Ultimate Truth (about this 'hidden world') is ascertainable by thought alone, and therefore
can be imposed on reality dogmatically and
aprioristically.

So, the non-worker founders of our movement -- who had been educated from
an early age to believe there was just such a 'hidden world' lying behind
'appearances', and which governed everything -- when they became
revolutionaries, looked for
'logical' principles relating to this abstract world that told them that change was inevitable,